Trauma, Meaning, and Spirituality

Trauma represents a spiritual or religious violation for many people. Survivors attempt to make sense out of painful events, incorporating that meaning into their current worldview in either a harmful or a more helpful way. This volume helps mental health practitioners—many of whom are less religious than their clients—understand the important relationship between trauma and spirituality, and how to best help survivors create meaning out of their experiences. Drawing on relevant theories and research, the authors present a new conceptual framework, the Reciprocal Meaning-Making Model, demonstrating how it can guide both assessment and treatment. Through the use of case material, the authors examine a range of spiritual views, traumas, and posttraumatic reactions that are reflective of the population as a whole rather than targeting only specific religions or cultural perspectives. Given the lack of scientific literature on the topic, this book fills an important gap, and will appeal to clinicians and researchers alike.