Psychological‐Mindedness and American Indian Historical Trauma: Interviews with Service Providers from a Great Plains Reservation

The concept of historical trauma (HT) was developed to explain clinical distress among descendants of Jewish Holocaust survivors and has since been ascribed new meanings to account for suffering in diverse contexts. In American Indian (AI) communities, the concept of AI HT has been tailored and promoted as an expanded notion of trauma that combines psychological injury with historical oppression to causally connect experiences with Euro‐American colonization to contemporary behavioral health disparities. However, rather than clinical formulations emphasizing psychological injury, a focused content analysis of interviews with 23 AI health and human service providers (SPs) on a Great Plains reservation demonstrated strong preferences for socio‐cultural accounts of oppression. Reflective of a local worldview associated with minimal psychological‐mindedness, this study illustrates how cultural assumptions embedded within health discourses like HT can conflict with diverse cultural forms and promote “psychologized” perspectives on suffering that may limit attention to social, economic, and political determinants of health.     

Belongings Beyond Borders: Reflections of Young Refugees on Their Relationships with Location

Young separated refugees are exiled from familiar places and on seeking asylum encounter new, potentially alienating, places. Yet, there is limited research regarding the effects of location on the psychological experiences of young separated refugees. This study explores the relationships that young adults who arrived in the UK as separated refugees have with the spaces that they inhabit and the consequences of these. It draws on qualitative interviews with young men from Iraq and Afghanistan who are living in London. Four key themes emerged from the analysis. Participants felt frustrated in bureaucratic settings where processes of labelling and physical manipulation prevented their sense of subjectivity from being expressed. Certain community spaces offered a rich range of support. Micro‐spaces of belonging and embodied processes of exploration in the wider community were also reported to be psychologically beneficial. The themes suggest that considerations of young separated refugees' relations to place may provide alternative psychological understandings of their experiences, particularly in relation to concepts such as trauma. Policy implications related to immigration control and the benefits of community projects are highlighted. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘You were not born here,so you are classless,you are free!’ Social class and cultural complex in analysis

The unconscious impact of differences in culture and social class is discussed from the perspective of an analyst practising in London whose ‘foreign accent’ prevents patients from placing her within the social stratifications by which they feel confined. Because she is seen by them as an analyst from both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the British psycho‐social fabric and cultural complex, this opens a space in the transference that enables fuller exploration of the impact of the British social class system on patients’ experience of themselves and their world. The paper considers this impact as a trans‐generational trauma of living in a society of sharp socio‐economic divisions based on material property. This is illustrated with the example of a patient who, at the point of moving towards the career to which he aspired, was unable to separate a sense of personal identity from the social class he so desperately wanted to leave behind and walk the long avenue of individuation. The dearth of literature on the subject of class is considered, and the paper concludes that not enough attention is given to class identification in training.     

童年期创伤对大学生抑郁的影响:早期适应不良图式和负性生活事件的作用

目的:考察早期适应不良图式、负性生活事件在童年期创伤与大学生抑郁间的影响机制。方法:采用童年期创伤问卷、Young图式问卷短版中文修订版、青少年生活事件量表及90项症状自评量表对1423名大学生进行调查,结果表明:(1)童年期创伤既可以直接正向预测大学生抑郁,也可以通过早期适应不良图式中的分离和拒绝、自主性及能力受损两大图式类别间接地正向预测大学生抑郁;(2)负性生活事件调节了早期适应不良图式在童年期创伤与抑郁间的中介作用     

The Psychology of Health and Illness: The Mental Health and Physiological Effects of Intimate Partner Violence on Women

Violence against women is a global public health problem with about one in three women experiencing either physical and or sexual intimate partner violence during their lifetime. Globally as many as 38% of homicides committed against women are by a male intimate partner. Violence against women may have negative effects on their mental, physical, and reproductive health (WHO fact sheet, 2016). Untreated individuals who have experienced violence or life-threatening situations may develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This disorder has the potential to be life-changing and cause negative psychological and medical issues (Rokach, Ahmed, & Patel, 2017). This potentially life-changing nature and consequence of violence affecting women world-wide deserves greater attention to ensure elimination of risk factors, financial support of investigational studies to promote detection of victims, and research to increase therapeutic efficacy of remediation. These efforts should be bolstered by all physicians, mental health experts, social service specialists, and public health advocates.     

Characteristics of memories for traumatic and nontraumatic birth

Evidence for memory characteristic differences between trauma and other memories in non‐clinical samples is inconsistent. However, trauma is frequently confounded with the event recalled. This study compares trauma and nontrauma memories for the same event, childbirth, in a non‐clinical sample of 285 women 4–6 weeks after birth. None of the women met diagnostic criteria for post‐traumatic stress disorder. Traumatic birth, defined by the DSM‐5 event criterion, was reported by 100 women. The ratings of some memory characteristics did not differ between memories for traumatic and nontraumatic birth: All were rated highly coherent and central to women's lives, with moderate sensory memory. However, women who experienced traumatic births reported more involuntary recall, reliving, and negative/mixed emotions. Thus, trauma memories differed from nontrauma memories. In this non‐clinical sample, this is likely to be due to encoding during trauma rather than the distinctive memory profile for memories retrieved by those experiencing trauma symptoms.     

Posttraumatic Growth in Trauma Survivors: Associations With Attachment to God and God Representation

Individuals often turn to religion or spirituality to cope with or make sense of trauma. In this study of 222 university students who reported a history of trauma, we examined whether God representation and attachment to God were associated with posttraumatic outcomes. Trauma outcomes include both the negative impacts of trauma and the perceived posttraumatic growth (PTG) that can occur in trauma survivors. Results revealed that both an authoritarian representation of God and an avoidant attachment to God were predictive of experiences of PTG.     

The stigma of widowhood in war and disaster affected communities of Sri Lanka: Contextual paths between trauma exposure and mental health distress

To add to the dialogue regarding the long-term recovery and wellbeing of war and tsunami-affected women in Sri Lanka, we utilised the Conservation of Resources Theory (COR, Hobfoll, 2009) to inform an investigation of direct and indirect effects. The study was specifically designed to assess how traumatic exposure may represent a form of loss which may associate with related losses in the form of external and internal stigma which may then associate with poor mental health outcomes. The data for this study were collected in 2016 from a sample of 379 widowed women in Eastern Sri Lanka; participant spouses died in the civil war, in the tsunami, or from health or other problems. Our analyses yielded a model suggesting associations between remembered trauma event exposure from war and disaster, external stigma, internalised stigma and mental health symptom distress. Results further yielded direct and indirect effects suggesting that trauma may represent a form of loss, and potentially lead to distress through the weight and challenges of stigma.     

PSYCHOANALYSIS IN CHINA: AN ESSAY ON THE RECENT LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

Using extensive quotation, the author reviews the introduction and current state of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy in China from the vantage point of recent publications in English. Psychoanalysis was briefly introduced to China before the Communist era, then forbidden, and has experienced an accelerated reintroduction since the late 1980s. The author briefly summarizes the cultural and historical background of China relevant to the introduction of psychoanalysis, the traumatic history of China, and the deep structure of thought and philosophical differences from Western culture that challenge a simple imposition of psychoanalytic ideas and practice, and some psychological effects of rapid cultural change throughout China. Training programs in China, the general enthusiasm for analysis among the Chinese, and a number of notable contributions by Western and Chinese authors are discussed. Also surveyed are the use of distance technology for training and treatment, the personal experience of Chinese senior and junior colleagues, and ongoing challenges to the continuing growth of psychoanalysis and analytic psychotherapy in China.