KQED's Forum Rethinking Healing: Insights from Survivors of Extreme Trauma
Apr 20, 2026
Suzan Song, psychiatrist and global mental health expert and author of Why We Suffer and How We Heal, explores how people recover from extreme trauma without relying only on talk therapy. She discusses narrative, ritual, and purpose as healing tools. Conversation touches on community rituals, nonverbal practices like dance, and reframing responsibility vs. systemic causes of suffering.
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Community Purification Restored Binta's Belonging
- Binta, a Sierra Leonean child soldier, found healing not by speaking but through a community body purification ritual that absolved her and restored belonging.
- The ritual allowed the village to re-engage with her identity as a member of the community.
Ritualize Hope To Build A Psychosocial Vaccine
- Ritualize hope through practices that map to how you naturally regulate (emotion, spirit, identity, reach-out).
- Song calls this a psychosocial vaccine: repeated rituals prepare you for future instability.
Hostage Survivor Used Inner Thoughts And Mattering
- A hostage returnee survived years of deprivation by holding inner thoughts and a purpose: to ensure other hostages would not feel alone.
- This shows that mental autonomy and commitment to others can sustain people under extreme control.
