Journal of Trauma & Dissociation

Call for Submissions

Trauma and Dissociation in South and Southeast Asia: Culture, Context, and Clinical Practice

A Special Issue of Journal of Trauma & Dissociation

Submission Deadline: June 15, 2027

Trauma and dissociation are increasingly recognised as critical areas of clinical practice and research across the world, yet much of the existing literature has emerged from Euro-American contexts. In South and Southeast Asia, experiences of trauma and dissociation are influenced by cultures, religions, family systems, migration patterns, colonial and postcolonial realities, social inequalities and rapidly changing mental health systems. Dissociative experiences may be understood through multiple frameworks, including psychological, somatic, relational, spiritual, and cultural expressions of distress, creating both challenges and opportunities for assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and research.

This special issue seeks to bring to the foreground research and clinical knowledge from South and Southeast Asia, inviting work that deepens the understanding of how trauma and dissociation are experienced, conceptualised, assessed, and treated within specific local and regional contexts.

Potential topics and questions of interest include (but are not limited to):

• How are trauma, dissociation, and dissociative disorders understood, recognized, or misrecognized within the cultures and clinical systems of South and Southeast Asia?
• How do stigma, shame, family secrecy, gender norms, religious frameworks, and help-seeking pathways influence the recognition, disclosure, treatment access, and outcomes of trauma-related dissociation?
• What challenges arise in assessing PTSD, C-PTSD, dissociative symptoms, and dissociative disorders in contexts where validated tools, specialist training, or diagnostic recognition may be limited?
• What ethical, supervisory, and training issues arise for clinicians and researchers working with complex trauma and dissociation in South and Southeast Asian contexts?
• How are trauma-focused and dissociation-informed therapies being adapted in the region, including phase-oriented treatment, parts work, somatic approaches, group interventions, community models, and culturally grounded healing practices? Where available, what evidence exists regarding the efficacy or effectiveness of these interventions?

The goal of this special issue of Journal of Trauma & Dissociation is to advance culturally grounded, clinically meaningful, and methodologically rigorous scholarship on trauma and dissociation in South and Southeast Asia.  We seek contributions that deepen understanding of how dissociation is experienced, interpreted, assessed, and treated within specific cultural, social, historical, and structural contexts.

We seek to move the field toward greater rigor, consistency, and internal and external validity in definition, conceptualization, measurement, and treatment. We invite manuscripts that provide new empirical, clinical, theoretical, or conceptual contributions, as well as literature reviews and meta-analyses.

All manuscripts will be peer-reviewed.

Manuscripts should be 1500-5500 words. For more information, see Instructions for Authors at Journal of Trauma and Dissociation.

Complete submissions will be accepted for consideration until June 15, 2027. Please refer to the Journal of Trauma & Dissociation for specific submission requirements (including a submission checklist) and more information about the journal. Manuscripts should be submitted via the journal’s website. We welcome your questions and correspondence prior to submission. Also, interested authors are welcome to submit a 250-word abstract or expression of interest for feedback from the special issue editors regarding the appropriateness of their proposals for this issue.

If you are interested in serving as a peer reviewer for this special issue, we welcome your involvement and invite you to contact the special issue editors via e-mail.

Email for Guest Editors: jtdseasiaeds@gmail.com