Chapter 2: Africana Women′s Ways of Coping with Traumatic Life Events: A Meta-Ethnography

This chapter presents results of a meta-ethnographic study of the coping strategies employed by Africana women in response to traumatic life events. Within the stress and coping literature, Traumatic Life Events (Kubany et al., 2000) are variably known as Negative Life Events (Garnefski, Kraaij, & Spinhoven, 2001), Stressful Life Events (Goodman, Corcoran, Turner, Yuan, & Green, 1998), and simply as Life Events (Gray, Litz, Hsu, & Lombardo, 2004). Consistent with the criteria set forth in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5^th ed.; DSM-5;American Psychiatric Association, 2013), this body of literature construes traumatic life events as discrete experiences that involve actual or threatened death or serious injury; or, a threat to the physical integrity of self and/ or others. Such events may include the death of a loved one, a physical assault, a sexual assault, a life-threatening accident, receiving a life-threatening/debilitating medical diagnosis, the sudden loss of shelter/dislocation, and/or the sudden loss of paid work/basic provisions.