The Contagion of Psychopathology across Different Psychiatric Disorders: A Comparative Theoretical Analysis

Psychopathology is often studied and treated from an individual-centered approach. However, studies have shown that psychological distress is often best understood from a contextual, environmental perspective. This paper explores the literature on emotional contagion and symptom transmission in psychopathology, i.e., the complex ways in which one person’s psychological distress may yield symptoms among others in his/her close environment. We argue that emotions, cognitions, and behaviors often do not stay within the borders of the individual, but rather represent intricate dynamic experiences that are shared by individuals, as well as transmitted between them. While this claim was comprehensively studied in the context of some disorders (e.g., secondary traumatization and the “mimicking” of symptoms among those close to a trauma survivor), it was very scarcely examined in the context of others. We aim to bridge this gap in knowledge by examining the literature on symptom transmission across four distinct psychiatric disorders: PTSD, major depression, OCD, and psychosis. We first review the literature on emotional contagion in each disorder separately, and then we subsequently conduct a comparative analysis highlighting the shared and differential mechanisms underlying these processes in all four disorders. In this era of transdiagnostic conceptualizations of psychopathology, such an examination is timely, and it may carry important clinical implications.

The Changeling Legend and Queer Kinship in Caitriona Lally’s Eggshells

In Caitriona Lally's debut novel Eggshells (2015), the narrator Vivian Lawlor is an adult woman with a quirky personality living in North Dublin, who believes herself to be a changeling. Throughout the novel, Vivian travels various paths in Dublin looking for specific ‘thin places,’ creating ‘an alternative map of Dublin’, as Claire Kilroy's review puts it. Folklore is often used as a code for hiding aspects of Irish life that are unspeakable, and in Eggshells the changeling story is a coded testimony of family violence in which the changeling figure is labelled as nonhuman. Rejected by family, she looks to queer models of kinship as outlined by Judith Butler, through transformative portals and a companion who is a fellow trauma survivor. This essay argues that, while her experience of traumatic family violence is silently coded within the changeling story, Vivian strategically deploys changeling legend to embody a nonconforming gender presentation.

Rethinking Victimhood: Phenomenology, Religion, and the Human Condition

How we use our own victimhood and that of others has been changing in recent years. Today it may be used to decry an injustice of violence, to garner attention to our causes, to command a unique moral and ecclesial authority, or even to gain advantage over other groups. The many possible uses of victimhood lead us to study phenomenologically its influence upon our human condition, considering especially its cultural manifestations, and religious underpinnings. The contributions investigate the topic through four sections: 1) Blame, Liability, Ressentiment, 2) Christianity, Atonement, Scapegoating, 3) Trauma, Survivor Guilt, Exile, and 4) Culture, Globalization Media.

Bridget, Conley. Memory from the Margins: Ethiopia’s Red Terror Martyrs Memorial Museum, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, pp 255.

This book consists of six chapters. The first chapter deals with the essence of “Memory from the Margins”. The second chapter discussed the ‘Ethiopian revolution and the Dergue Regime’s red terror (1974-1978)”. The third and fourth chapters also discuss post-Dergue “Transitional influences (1991-2005)” and “the shape of memory (2003-2010)”. The fifth chapter covers the “Tour as traumatic performance, 2010 to present)” and the last chapter concludes “on the memory and future transitions”. First, I would like to appreciate the author for presenting us her book about one of the key chapters in modern Ethiopian political history: the history of Red Terror and its legacy on memory, history and quest for democracy, torture, trauma, survivor docent/victims, reconciliation, museum and transitional justice as well as the ideals “reform and revolution”. This book is timely and detailed in terms of discovering the Red Terror atrocities and survivors’ trauma and capturing similar experiences in other parts of the world.

INSIDER RESEARCH: REPRESENTING PERIPHERAL VOICES AND MULTIPLE IDENTITIES WHEN WRITING ABOUT PERSONAL TRAUMA

As an ‘insider’ researcher writing about personal trauma, I sought to reconcile my multiple identities in my doctoral thesis: scholar/researcher, creative writing practitioner, and trauma survivor evolving from the process of writing about trauma. Concerns arose about how I could insert these peripheral voices and multiple identities into my creative thesis, while paying attention to the tenets of scholarly rigour and my desire for creativity. This article presents a case study of the design of my thesis, where my research endeavour was to ‘re-story’ my self-narrative through ficto-memoir: a creative writing process whereby my personal experiences were fictionalised, but carried the same emotional affect and benefits as writing about real experiences. This article contends that creativity could still be achieved in a conventional academic thesis structure with a slightly modified format that allows for the insertion of an author’s parallel voices into the research and alignment with the creative work.

Trauma Healing With Play Therapy For Student of Senior High School 16 Pandeglang Banten

A year pass after Tsunami Banten - Lampung disaster, there were some victims who still feeling trauma. This study aims to describe about the implementation of play therapy method for reduce students survivor of the Tsunami Sunda Strait disaster trauma. This research method is descriptive, that will describe about doing play therapy for trauma healing on trauma survivor. The results of the assessment showed that there are some students experience physical, emotional, and habitual disorders. Play therapy activities carried out in three stages: initiation, outdoor activities, and indoor activities. The final results show that after participating in play therapy activities, students feel more comfortable and relax because they can pour out their fears. Students also begin to reduce anxiety and fear.

Trauma and the Family

An analysis of family support or lack of family support as key protective and risk factors is reviewed. Specific aspects of family support is defined and research on how it impacts trauma as both a preventative measure and a central component of the healing process is provided. Research regarding lack of family support and the consequences to the trauma survivor is offered. A description of numerous types of family interactional patterns and they interfere with family support is outlined. Cross-cultural issues related to trauma and trauma treatment are addressed.

Intergenerational Trauma

Intergenerational trauma and subsequent impairment of trauma survivors parenting of their children is explored. How to engage these parents in integrative family and systems treatment (I-FAST) and how to simultaneously help with their parenting impairments and their trauma symptoms is described. Four cases are examined in detail, covering four types of treatment situations. In Cases 1 and 2, helping a trauma survivor parent when they are requesting help for their problem teenagers, but not for their trauma-related difficulties is described. In Case 3, helping a trauma survivor mother focus directly on resolving her trauma symptoms as a method for helping her seriously impaired daughter is described. In Case 4, focusing on serious dissociative symptoms of a mother, which only developed after the successful resolution of her son’s difficulties is described.