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Rethinking Trauma as a Global Challenge

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Trauma and Migration

Abstract

Trauma is a term originally applied to physical injuries and some of its immediate effects. The first mention of the term ‘traumatic’ was recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary edition of 1656, in which trauma is defined as ‘… pertaining to wounds or the cure of wounds’. It is since the late 1800s that ‘trauma’ has come to refer to a range of psychological impacts of the experience or threat of violence, injury and loss.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The initial part of this section is largely based on the works of Allan Young, in his book The Harmony of Illusions: Inventing Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

  2. 2.

    Low-intensity warfare has been defined as a ‘total war at the grass roots level’, where the local population and not the territory is the target for psychological warfare, terrorisation and other traumatic experiences.

  3. 3.

    In recent war scenarios, such as in the former Yugoslavia and Somalia, about nine out of every ten people injured or killed were civilians.

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  1. Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, Douglas Hospital Research Centre, McGill University, 6875 LaSalle Blvd., Montreal, QC, H4H 1R3, Canada

    Duncan Pedersen

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Correspondence to Duncan Pedersen .

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  1. Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the Charité, St. Hedwig Hospital, Berlin, Germany

    Meryam Schouler-Ocak

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Pedersen, D. (2015). Rethinking Trauma as a Global Challenge. In: Schouler-Ocak, M. (eds) Trauma and Migration. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17335-1_2

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