Thema Bryant-Davis examines the cultural issues that health-care professionals need to consider in caring for trauma survivors.

An interdisciplinary discussion of traumatic experience seeks better understanding and care for the suffering of individuals and societies

Decades after Charles Figley’s landmark Trauma and Its Wake was published, our understanding of trauma has grown and deepened, but we still face considerable challenges when treating trauma survivors. This is especially the case for professionals who work with veterans and active-duty military personnel. War Trauma and Its Wake, then, is a vital book. The editors—one a Vietnam veteran who wrote the overview chapter on treatment for Trauma and Its Wake, the other an Army Reserve psychologist with four deployments—have produced a book that addresses both the specific needs of particular warrior communities as well as wider issues such as battlemind, guilt, suicide, and much, much more. The editors’ and contributors’ deep understanding of the issues that warriors face makes War Trauma and Its Wake a crucial book for understanding the military experience, and the lessons contained in its pages are essential for anyone committed to healing war trauma.

First published in 1987. Trauma and Its Wake, Volume II: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Theory, Research, and Treatment is the eighth book in the Psychosocial Stress Book Series. The purpose of the Series is to develop and publish books that in some way make a significant contribution to the understanding and management of the psychosocial stress reaction paradigm. The books are designed to advance the work of clinicians, researchers, and other professionals involved in the varied aspects of human services. The primary readership of this Series includes those practitioners, scholars, and their students who are committed to this purpose. The origin of this current book can be traced to Volume #4 in the Series, Trauma and Its Wake: The Study and Treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, edited by Charles R. Figley. This was the first attempt to generalize research and clinical findings among a wide variety of traumatic or catastrophic events towards a generalized view of traumatic and post-traumatic stress reactions. Chapters focused on the immediate and long-term psychosocial consequences of exposure to one of many types of catastrophic events: war, rape, natural disasters, incest. Other chapters focused on effective methods of treating or preventing stress reactions or disorders. It is the first in a series of books that will review the latest innovations in theory, research, and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), caused by a wide variety of stressful life events. The book you are reading is the second of this series of annually published volumes on PTSD within the Book Series.

Now in 24 languages. Nature's Lessons in Healing Trauma... Waking the Tiger offers a new and hopeful vision of trauma. It views the human animal as a unique being, endowed with an instinctual capacity. It asks and answers an intriguing question: why are animals in the wild, though threatened routinely, rarely traumatized? By understanding the dynamics that make wild animals virtually immune to traumatic symptoms, the mystery of human trauma is revealed. Waking the Tiger normalizes the symptoms of trauma and the steps needed to heal them. People are often traumatized by seemingly ordinary experiences. The reader is taken on a guided tour of the subtle, yet powerful impulses that govern our responses to overwhelming life events. To do this, it employs a series of exercises that help us focus on bodily sensations. Through heightened awareness of these sensations trauma can be healed.

Trauma does not just happen to a few unlucky people; it is the bedrock of our psychology. Death and illness touch us all, but even the everyday sufferings of loneliness and fear are traumatic. In The Trauma of Everyday Life renowned psychiatrist and author of Thoughts Without a Thinker Mark Epstein uncovers the transformational potential of trauma, revealing how it can be used for the mind's own development. Epstein finds throughout that trauma, if it doesn't destroy us, wakes us up to both our minds' own capacity and to the suffering of others. It makes us more human, caring and wise. It can be our greatest teacher, our freedom itself, and it is available to all of us. Western psychology teaches that if we understand the cause of trauma, we might move past it while many drawn to Eastern practices see meditation as a means of rising above, or distancing themselves from, their most difficult emotions. Both, Epstein argues, fail to recognize that trauma is an indivisible part of life and can be used as a tool for growth and an ever deeper understanding of change. When we regard trauma with this perspective, understanding that suffering is universal and without logic, our pain connects us to the world on a more fundamental level. Guided by the Buddha's life as a profound example of the power of trauma, Epstein's also closely examines his own experience and that of his psychiatric patients to help us all understand that the way out of pain is through it.

Trauma in Schools and Communities uses the power of first-hand, autobiographical narratives to illustrate the advantages and pitfalls of specific interventions implemented in the wake of tragedies. This book addresses short- and long-term impacts of traumatic events and the challenges both survivors and responders face, using case studies from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing; the Gulf War; the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks; Hurricanes Katrina and Rita; student suicides; the killing of a teacher; and the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary, Virginia Tech, and Chardon, Ohio, among others. Each story features reactions and lessons that are unique and support specific, multidisciplinary, structured interventions that should be a part of every crisis team’s protocol and every community’s recovery effort. An appendix features a summary of the lessons learned, a "what if?" scenario, time-specific trauma recovery interventions, a fan-out meeting agenda, a traumatic event crisis intervention plan, and answers to questions commonly asked by students about suicide.