Discourses of Loss and Bereavement in Tigray, Ethiopia

Abstract

Western trauma frameworks, such as PTSD-focused inventories and interventions, are embedded in a psychosocial discourse saying that highly distressing experiences must be expressed and confronted. This study, which is based on six months of focused ethnographic research in postwar Tigray, Ethiopia, reveals authoritative Tigrayan discourses that encourage people to avoid disclosing and expressing emotional pain. Dogmas of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, saying that grieving and crying would have negative physical and spiritual consequences, were found to have a broad consensus in the society. The ethnography suggests that the Tigrayan psychosocial discourses make sense and may be functional in their context, as the marginal socioeconomic conditions of Tigray force individuals to concentrate on their day-to-day struggle for survival. Findings are discussed in terms of implications for the cross-cultural applicability of conventional frameworks of Western trauma psychology.