Trauma and Uprooting

Trauma and Uprooting describes the traumatic consequences on countless people of the multiple outbreaks of violence in the hundred-year period 1914-2014, i.e. from the First World War to the ISIS attacks on the Yazidi communities of Northern Iraq. The impact of trauma on people who, after living through terror in their countries, have become uprooted is something that has been fully realized in comparatively recent years, not least as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Until the late 1970s there was an almost total ignorance worldwide of the psychological ramifications of violence and uprooting. The term PTSD-post-traumatic stress disorder(s) and the description of its symptoms - were formulated only in the 1980s. Following descriptions of some of the highly traumatizing events that have bedeviled our world and their impact on people’s minds-not least those of the children - the last two chapters describe some of the extensive research and experience of senior psychiatrists who have discovered ways of tackling the presence of the PTSD that can make people’s lives a nightmare.