Disclosure and silencing: A systematic review of the literature on patterns of trauma communication in refugee families

Abstract

This systematic review aimed to explore the effects of different degrees of parental disclosure of traumatic material from the past on the psychological well-being of children in refugee families. A majority of studies emphasize the importance of the timing of disclosure and the manner in which it takes place, rather than the effects of open communication or silencing strategies per se. A pattern emerged in which the level of parental disclosure that promotes psychological adjustment in refugee children depends on whether the children themselves have been directly exposed to traumatic experiences, and whether the children are prepubescent or older. The process of trauma disclosure is highly culturally embedded. Future research needs to address the culturally shaped variations in modulated disclosure and further explore how modulated disclosure can be facilitated in family therapy with traumatized refugee families.

Keywords: disclosure; refugee families; silencing; transgenerational transmission of trauma; trauma.

Figure 1.

Selection of studies based on the PRISMA 2009 flow diagram (Moher, Liberati, Tetzlaff, & Altman, 2009).