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Psychological‐Mindedness and American Indian Historical Trauma: Interviews with Service Providers from a Great Plains Reservation
Author(s) -
Hartmann William E.,
Gone Joseph P.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
american journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.113
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1573-2770
pISSN - 0091-0562
DOI - 10.1002/ajcp.12036
Subject(s) - oppression , historical trauma , health psychology , sociology , public health , reservation , social psychology , distress , psychology , politics , medicine , psychotherapist , political science , nursing , law
The concept of historical trauma ( HT ) was developed to explain clinical distress among descendants of Jewish Holocaust survivors and has since been ascribed new meanings to account for suffering in diverse contexts. In American Indian ( AI ) communities, the concept of AI HT has been tailored and promoted as an expanded notion of trauma that combines psychological injury with historical oppression to causally connect experiences with Euro‐American colonization to contemporary behavioral health disparities. However, rather than clinical formulations emphasizing psychological injury, a focused content analysis of interviews with 23 AI health and human service providers ( SP s) on a Great Plains reservation demonstrated strong preferences for socio‐cultural accounts of oppression. Reflective of a local worldview associated with minimal psychological‐mindedness, this study illustrates how cultural assumptions embedded within health discourses like HT can conflict with diverse cultural forms and promote “psychologized” perspectives on suffering that may limit attention to social, economic, and political determinants of health.