Section outline

  • Do you believe that experiences of, understanding, and treatment of trauma varies across cultures? How different are these perspectives from those used in the Western world? The relationship between culture and trauma is an important one because traumatic experiences occur throughout the life course and is universal in manifestation and occurrence. The effective healing, treatment, interventions, counseling and medical care requires the inclusion of culture. Therefore, in this week's class we will zone in on:

    • Cross-cultural approaches to trauma
    • Languages of distress and models of coping
    • Western models to understand trauma and their applicability across cross-cultural contexts
    • Medicalization of trauma and its impact across cultural settings endorsing different understandings of suffering and healing