Cultural Scripts of Traumatic Stress: Outline, Illustrations, and Research Opportunities

Abstract

As clinical-psychological scientists and practitioners increasingly work with diverse populations of traumatized people, it becomes increasingly important to attend to cultural models that influence the ways in which people understand and describe their responses to trauma. This paper focuses on potential uses of the concept of cultural script in this domain. Originally described by cognitive psychologists in the 1980s, scripts refer to specific behavioral and experiential sequences of elements such as thoughts, memories, attention patterns, bodily sensations, sleep abnormalities, emotions and affective expressions, motivation, coping attempts, and ritualized behaviors that are relevant to posttraumatic adjustment. We differentiate between experiences of traumatic stress that are scripted (e.g., cultural explanations are available) versus unscripted. Further characteristics such as script tracks, the effect of script interruptions, and contextual fit of scripts with other cultural models are also described. We consider examples of traumatic stress associated with war and organized, sexualized violence from “Western” and “non-Western” world regions. The concluding part of this review describes a number of possibilities for methodological approaches to assessment of cultural scripts. Capturing central elements of the script(s) of trauma would aid psychological researchers and clinicians in understanding the experiences of trauma in cultural context, which could ultimately lead to better clinical service opportunities worldwide.

Study of possible risk factors for posttraumatic stress disorder.

“…Cultural norms around emotional expression may also lead to underreporting of symptoms. While prior trauma and social support appear to represent universal risks, PTSD presentation, and predictive models are likely shaped by culturally bound trauma responses and interpretations of illness (Chentsova-Dutton & Maercker, 2019).…”

Need for Age-Appropriate Diagnostic Criteria for PTSD

“…Future empirical studies should therefore not only include the "usual suspect" symptoms of PTSD but also "unconventional" symptoms. From a methodological point of view, this represents the state of the art of how studies are conducted today in cultural clinical psychology and transcultural psychiatry, and how this has also been recommended for PTSD research (Chentsova-Dutton & Maercker, 2019). The author of the present article recently spoke of older adults as a distinct cultural group in the context of therapy for PTSD with older adults (Maercker, 2020).…”

Auf dem Weg zu kulturellen Skripten von Traumafolgen

“…Chentsova-Dutton und Maercker [4] haben unter Anleihe aus der kognitiven Psychologie die Modellvorstellung der kulturellen Skripte für Traumafolgestörungen vorgeschlagen. Kulturelle Skripte sind definiert als dynamische Schemata von kausal verbundenen Abfolgen von Fakten, Kognitionen, Emotionen, Motivationen und Körperempfindungen.…”