Beyond Individualism Perspective of Trauma: Evidence for Adopting Collective Narratives for Empowering Long-Term Rehabilitation for Children of the Ethnic Qiang People Who Have Been Affected by Disaster

Abstract

Objective: Exploring how an ethnic culture-focused collective narrative strategy can be effectively used to promote resilience among the affected Qiang children for post-disaster psychological trauma at scale. Design: The study was conducted with a cohort of ethnic Qiang children through a pretest (n=1100) and post-three years test (n=957) to evaluate the effect of the intervention program from myth story-based collective narrative cultural practices. Results: Data from the study clearly indicate that children’s resilience behaviour had been greatly improved by the myth story-based collective narrative activities with average scores on 11 items showing a significant increase from 2.08 at baseline to 4.12 at 3 years follow-up posttest (mean=2.04, 95% CI=0.97, 3.11, p <0.0001). No similar change occurred in the control groups (mean=0.74, 95% CI=-0.75, 2.23, n.s). Conclusion: The adoption of an ethnic culture-focused collectivism narrative approach for reduction of vulnerability was able to greatly promote the cultural variable to enhance coping for Qiang children affected by trauma at scale, which informed the urgency for developing an indigenous psych-cultural agenda for collectively responding to disaster trauma in ethnic minority contexts.

Keywords

• trauma
• ethnic qiang children
• individualism
• collective narratives