Clinical Psychology Commons^™

Youth Coping With Oppression In Arab Spring And Its Psychological And Socio-Political Dynamics: The Example Of Palestinian Youth, Ibrahim Aref Kira, Abdul-Wahab Nasser Alawneh, Sharifa Aboumediene, Linda Lewandowski

International Symposium on Arab Youth

Arab Spring exemplified how distress due to cumulative dynamics of oppression, poverty and chronic stress can result in mental health events that prime shared distress and trigger socio-political uprisings. Further, Islamist parties won the elections that followed the uprisings. Additionally resiliency of youth and will to survive is the source of their positive coping with oppression. Unfortunately, most of our understanding of and interventions with trauma are focused on past traumas perpetrated by individuals, current and ongoing traumas perpetrated by social groups, such as oppression and discriminations are mostly ignored. Why Arab Spring? And why religious groups became the dominant …