Conceptualizing Attachment Trauma: Exploring Emotional Vulnerabilities among Disaster Affected Children of Gujarat

This study compares attachment trauma and psychological adjustment of child survivors of an earthquake and social violence in Gujarat (n = 127). In particular it explores attachment style/s associated with the two disaster traumas and tries to explicate, what these tell us about the particular vagaries of trauma. Results show larger number of insecurely attached children in the disaster trauma sample and the dismissing attachment style dominates particularly in the earthquake sample whereas in the riots sample one can see a presence of what can be termed as a ‘mixed attachment’ style-vacillation between dismissing and preoccupied states of mind. The implications of these findings for a conceptualization of attachment trauma are discussed in details.