Mourning Context: Grieving Primary and Secondary Loss in Forcibly Displaced Populations

Abstract

In an increasingly interconnected geographical landscape, vast numbers of persons are currently living separated from their home and homeland of origin. According to the United Nations, there are estimated to be nearly 84 million displaced persons worldwide (UNHCR, USA). Psychological theorists such as Urie Bronfenbrenner have suggested that an individual's context, their historical, social, cultural, national, and ethnic positioning has vital psychological significance for building and maintaining a sense of self and personal identity. Loss of contextual factors experienced in the course of forcible displacement can have significant psychological consequences for those who are displaced. A growing body of literature around grief and mourning is showing that such loss has the capacity to evoke a complex process of grief. In considering this problem of loss, grief, and mourning, it is essential to have a robust understanding of the nature of the human person. Persons are created for communion, rather than separation. From this perspective, loss is understood to be an unnatural phenomenon, which in turn illuminates the immense cost of loss to the human persons - spiritually, physically, and psychologically. Interventions aimed at supporting the mental health of forcibly displaced persons informed by a broader understanding of the essentially relational nature of the human, i.e., that do not reduce flourishing to basic survival, are needed to adequately respond to the needs forcibly displaced persons experience in the world today. This research could serve clinical mental health services and non-clinical socio-cultural institutions such as faith communities regarding how to best collaborate to provide for the well-being of forcibly displaced persons.