Evaluating the Evidence for Interventions Directed at Healing Collective Trauma: A Systematic Review

Recognition is growing for the need to support healing at both individual and community levels in situations of mass trauma exposure. Presently, many gold-standard individual-level healing practices exist; however, community-level interventions are less common and their efficacy is uncertain. This systematic review examined the current research efforts regarding collective trauma interventions. In accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis Framework, Cochrane Library, PsycInfo, PubMed, and Scopus databases were searched for articles published on "collective trauma" OR "mass trauma" OR "social trauma" OR "traumatized societies" AND "intervention" OR "treatment" OR "healing" (December 2023) revealing 284 articles. Title and abstract screening, by two reviewers, resulted in 14 articles being retained for this review. Studies of all designs were included if they examined any form of intervention within the context of multiperson trauma exposure. A standardized coding process was used to extract data on key features, including quality review using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. Findings were tabulated and presented in a narrative synthesis. The 14 retained studies, sourced from peer-reviewed journals, explored interventions stated to target collective trauma suffering. They employed different research methodologies, including ethnographic, survey-based quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches to understand collective trauma interventions using qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods designs. While these studies offer valuable insights into collective trauma interventions, they would generally be considered to be of low research quality. Future efforts must focus on clearly defining the construct of collective trauma, ongoing development of collective trauma interventions, and creating evaluation protocols that balance research rigor with real-world practice constraints.