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Mending the Levee: How Supernaturally Anchored Conceptions of the Person Impact on Trauma Perception and Healing among Children (Cases from Madagascar and Nepal)
Author(s) -
Evers Sandra,
Brug Mienke,
Wesel Floryt,
Krabbendam Lydia
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
children and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.538
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1099-0860
pISSN - 0951-0605
DOI - 10.1111/chso.12153
Subject(s) - distressing , psychosocial , perception , psychology , psychological trauma , developmental psychology , social psychology , sociology , psychotherapist , neuroscience , chemistry
When dealing with children and youth who experience distressing events, psychosocial diagnostics and healing programmes principally resort to biomedical models. Children are often viewed as individualised ‘victims’ suffering from trauma and ‘in need’ of outside help. Highlighting case studies from Madagascar and Nepal, this article argues that the biomedical approach to trauma would be strengthened by a concomitant analysis of social networks, including the perceived relations with the supernatural. The various tandems of family and kin relationships, the living and the dead, constitute not only a social ‘levee’ breached by distressing events, but also the locus around which social relations are rebuilt.