collective trauma refers to the impact of a traumatic experience that affects and involves entire groups of people, communities, or societies. Collective trauma is extraordinary in that not only can it bring distress and negative consequences to individuals but in that it can also change the entire fabric of a community (Erikson, 1976).
I appreciate your efforts but it is a real, scientifically proven phenomenon.
Sure, but PTSD is a specific disorder that individuals are diagnosed with. If a group of people are unable to work towards a single goal, saying they have “collective ADHD” is imprecise and potentially offensive to people with the diagnosis.
That said, I knew what you meant 🤷
I think there’s a couple of people around with collective OCD that just can’t stand metaphor.
Jokes aside, and not being a sociologist, I do think it’s a good distinction because PTSD implies a maladaptive reaction to trauma, and communities, just like individuals, can process their trauma well or they can mess it up.
It seems to be the accepted term in the scholarly and clinical community.
“Collective trauma” or “collective PTSD”? The latter is what we were discussing earlier in this thread. It has zero occurrences on Google Ngrams: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Collective+PTSD%2C+collective+trauma&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3
