Page 230 - Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience

Fundamentals of Working With (Re)traumatized Populations 199

the trauma of the Holocaust and to have PTSD symptoms in response to
Holocaust-related events for which they are aware. That is, when trauma-
tized, children of survivors of the Holocaust (born after World War II)
responded as if the trauma had happened to them rather than to their par-
ents before they were born. More recently, lower cortisol levels were found
in women who were pregnant and directly exposed to the 9/11 terrorist
attacks. Strikingly, babies of mothers who developed PTSD also showed
low salivary cortisol levels in the first year of life (Yehuda et al., 2005).
These findings suggest that, in the face of retraumatization, includ-
ing repetition of prior trauma and new traumatic experience, individuals
with a history of prior trauma will require specialized, long-term attention
from both spiritual care and mental health providers. Although this in no
way suggests that those without prior trauma history do not require atten-
tion, it does emphasize that resilience may be compromised by a history of
trauma. Thus, retraumatization occurs when a person who had been trau-
matized in the past is exposed to further trauma or responds to even an
ordinary life event (possibly a reminder of the prior trauma) in a traumatic
fashion. This effect is in addition to any concrete insults to resilience, such
as loss of financial, social, and/or community support.
Massive trauma causes such diverse and complex destructive effects on
the body, psyche, family, and community that only a multidimensional,
multidisciplinary integrative framework (Danieli, 1998) is adequate to
describe and understand it and treat its consequences. Every individu-
al’s identity involves a complex interplay of multiple systems including
biological and intrapsychic; interpersonal including the familial, social,
and communal; ethnic, cultural, ethical, religious, spiritual, and natural;
educational/occupational; and material/economic, legal, environmental,
political, national, and international dimensions. These systems interact
and intermingle over the life span, creating a sense of continuity from past
through present to the future. Ideally, when fully functional, one should
have free psychological access to and movement within all of these iden-
tity systems. Each system is the focus of one or more disciplines that may
overlap and interact, such as biology, psychology, sociology, economics,
law, anthropology, religious studies and theology, and philosophy. Each
discipline has its own views of human nature and it is those that inform
what the professional thinks and does. The focus of this book on the indis-
pensable collaboration between mental health and clergy professionals in
the aftermath of both human-made and natural disasters, thus necessitates
the mutual exploration by professionals of both disciplines (that, in reality,
encompass numerous different “schools”) of the differing views of human