Article 8 — The Gap, Stated Precisely
What is not known, and what that does and does not permit.
Versión en español: Artículo 8 — El vacío, dicho con precisión
This is the article the series exists to make possible. Everything before it establishes what is known. This one states what is not.
No peer-reviewed study or formal report examines community-wide or town-wide secondary trauma originating from a single veteran's household.
Two literatures that do not meet
One examines families — spouses, children, parents — and stops consistently at the household. The other examines whole communities struck by a shared event: a flood, a war. That is the inverse of the situation here, where a community is adjacent to a crisis rather than inside it.
What the absence permits
Accurate: this question has not been formally studied. Not accurate: that this project discovers a new form of trauma. Also not accurate: treating the absence of evidence as evidence of absence.
A properly designed study might find substantial effects across a community, effects confined to a few individuals, or effects that resolved without intervention. None of these possibilities can be excluded, and this series does not exclude them.
What follows from a gap
A person who suspects they were affected, and finds no formal study confirming it, has encountered a gap in what has been examined — not a verdict on their experience.
Related reading
- Previous in the series: Article 7 — Four Terms That Are Not Interchangeable
- Next in the series: Article 9 — Patterns in Other Places
- Series start page: Secondary Trauma in Small Communities: Start Here
