Limerick academic's research rethinks psychological trauma
Condition can impact people's political outlook
A STUDY by a Limerick academic has revealed that traumatic experience can impact people's political outlook and appetite for social change.
University of Limerick (UL) Professor Orla Muldoon has published a major new book on psychological trauma.
The founding professor at the Department of Psychology and director of the Centre for Social Issues research at UL was given almost €2.5m in European Research Council funding to study trauma.
The resulting book, The Social Psychology of Trauma: Connecting the Personal and the Political, is designed to change thinking about trauma, offering a rethink of how stress, trauma and politics become intertwined.
Prof Muldoon said her research reveals trauma as a socially situated phenomenon linked to power and privilege or disempowerment and disadvantage.
“Doing research on the impact of traumatic experiences can be both heartening and heart-rending. You encounter people and situations that would touch the hardest of hearts and others who inspire with their tenacity and strength to go on. Even in a privileged Western nation such as Ireland, I don’t have to look hard to find stories of stress and trauma. Crisis and catastrophe happen with remarkable regularity," she said.
Prof Muldoon says she has written the book so it is accessible to victims and survivors of trauma, their families, those supporting them as well as practitioners, students, and academics.
It intertwines her own personal experiences of trauma to reveal how social and identity factors affect the experience and aftermath of trauma.
The book is also free to download in digital form by clicking here