Mourning for Social Trauma

Social trauma is a complex emotional experience in response to a stressful event that extremely challenges the coping capacity of a group of people. Social trauma if not worked through will encompass several consequences such as depression and violence at individual, social, and intergeneration levels. Mourning is concerned as a process of working through social trauma. Due to the important role of mourning in working through social trauma and blocking its consequences, the aim of this study is to review social trauma studies to find and classify the processes and steps suggested for mourning in social trauma. This study has been done on the basis of PRISMA (2020) guidelines for systematic reviews. Relevant studies have been searched in the google scholar database between 2002 to 2022. According to enter and exit criteria 32 studies have been chosen for exploration and 6 studies have been selected for final study. Findings encompass a 5-step process for mourning in social trauma including emotional expression, defining and verbalizing the loss, narrating, constructing new collective identity, and pursuit of goals and wills. Mourning for social trauma put an end to the violence loop and depression. As a result of mourning for social trauma the traumatized part of society could be able to see new capacities in themselves to pursue the lost ideals again while accepting the personal responsibility for social change to make a new path for creating a new collective destiny.