Community Trauma

As this course, along with the rest of the courses for this term close to an end, I’m often thinking about how my courses relate to each other and the real world.  One thing that I have been left thinking of is trauma, and how traumatic events affect the community.  In one of my other courses, I am looking at aggravated assault incidents, drug related crimes and poverty within a city.  Looking at all of this data has left me wondering how communities that are constantly experiencing traumatic events cope, or if they just view it as their new normal.  Communities who experience traumatic events once, whether that be neighborhoods that are experiencing an act of violence such as a homicide, or on the larger scale such as the events of 9/11 or the Boston Marathon, seem to be shocked to their core after the events that have happened, and these are usually broadcasted all throughout the media.  What about communities who constantly, or on a more continuous basis, experience trauma?  Do they build their own subculture around this trauma, and have it become their new normal?  Or is it still traumatic every time an event happens, even though they happen frequently?  

If you look at this on an individual basis, everyone reacts to trauma differently.  With constant exposure to traumatic events, some people continue to view these events as traumatic, while others become desensitized to them.  When looking at the community level, how do we support them as a whole?  If a whole community is desensitized from all of the trauma they have experienced, how do we treat that at the community level, especially if that is the only normal that the community has ever known?  Some responses to this might be to maybe open a neighborhood center where the kids within the community have somewhere to go, or to work on lowering the crime rates in the area.  

View all posts