ABSTRACT

Survivors’ backgrounds determine their experience of trauma and how they heal. Cultural influences can help prevent harmful psychological side effects by “furnishing social support, providing identities in terms of norms and values, and supplying a shared vision of the future” (de Vries, 1996, p. 400). Cultural groups also help because they support their members and encourage responsibility for others in the community, particularly within families. In addition, culture can provide healing rituals and belief systems that promote recovery and the process of finding meaning related to trauma (de Vries, 1996).