8. Contributions to Theory, Method, and Practice

The core principle on which this study is based is that what often appears as “common sense” or “known truths”, and what sometimes appears in the literature as truth without evidence and without formal testing of its validity, needs to be formally and scientifically studied. An example of such truths can be found in the book Redirect by Timothy Wilson (2011), which challenges the “known truth” that victims of trauma or abuse will benefit from immediate psychological counselling or crucial incident stress debriefing (CSID). Wilson provides evidence that offering grief counselling immediately after a tragedy or traumatic incident is not helpful as a strategy. The recommended and “better” strategy is to allow victims/survivors to deal with the trauma by using story-telling and journal writing a few weeks after the critical event.