POST #1: The Role of Witnessing & Re-witnessing of Trauma
The world is constantly evolving just as our response to, resilience and perceptions of trauma. Exposure to and experiences of trauma contribute to mental health disorders with the most common symptom being posttraumatic stress disorder, however, our bodies variably respond in several ways, including physical (physiological), psychological, emotional, and social (Bell & Robinson, 2013). Statistics show that traumatic exposure is more frequently encountered, as approximately 80% of Americans experience and or witness trauma at least once in their lifetime (van den Berk-Clark, 2018). Trauma is non-clinically defined as an event, (experienced or witnessed firsthand) of physical and emotional threats and injury. The psychological definition of trauma states it is an emotional response to a natural disaster, “exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence by directly experiencing the traumatic event(s), ...