Book Review: Healing a Community

When something as devastating as a mass shooting occurs, it is hard to know where to begin the process of healing. With so many people affected on such a mass scale, there is chaos, uncertainty, confusion — even for mental health providers. “Despite their best intentions, most clinicians are not adequately trained to work with people suffering from complicated grief and complex trauma, the psychological phenomena that often result from these tragedies,” writes Melissa Glaser. In her new book, Healing a Community: Lessons for Recovery after a Large-Scale Trauma, Glaser, who coordinated the Newtown Recovery and Response Team that responded to the Sandy Hook shooting, offers a practical guide designed to help clinicians, communities, and families cope in the wake of a mass trauma. “The unfortunate lesson I learned in Newtown, Connecticut following the Sandy Hook School shooting is that every community needs to create a mental health recovery plan so that its leaders, therapists and families know what to do if a large-scale tragedy occurs,” writes Glaser. Glaser describes working with a family in the immediate aftermath to help them break the news to their children that their son had been killed in the shooting. After spending four hours working with the family, holding space and allowing the heart-wrenching and raw emotions to flow, Glaser saw the family at an event three months later and, after some debate, decided to say hello to them. To her shock, the family ha...
Source: Psych Central - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tags: Book Reviews Children and Teens Disorders Family General Grief and Loss Memory and Perception Psychological Assessment Psychology Psychotherapy PTSD Trauma Treatment Violence & Aggression books on mass shootings books on mass Source Type: news