Traumatic Memory of One’s Son Gone Missing in War: Content Analysis Using Krippendorff’s Alpha

Abstract

Our aim was to determine (a) how parents deal with experiences like having a son missing in war, and (b) what expectations they have in terms of outcomes. This qualitative study included 29 parents of 21 sons gone missing in war. We used content analysis singling out narrative patterns and coded these. We assessed intercoder reliability using Krippendorff’s alpha coefficient. Items passing the Krippendorff’s alpha threshold of ≥.50 were verified using Cronbach’s alpha. Three of five coders showed acceptable intercoder agreement on 23 of the 173 identified topics (13.3%; Krippendorff’s alpha: .50-.82). Cronbach’s alpha coefficient confirmed intercoder reliability of .7903. Fathers’ narratives differ from mothers’. Statistics are a valuable tool for identifying specific motifs in grieving narratives of parents who have lost their child. Content analysis can provide insights without interfering with authentic personal experience sparing interviewees from reliving the traumatizing experience.

Keywords

dissociation Krippendorff’s alpha traumatic memory qualitative content analysis

Introduction

One’s experience of a son gone missing in war and his posthumous identification that does not involve visual recognition is a specific life phenomenon that cannot be manipulated for research purposes. Studying phenomena such as this should include the naturalist approach (description of the phenomenon; Patton, 2001), which is the fundamental characteristic of introspective psychology (Hoepfl, 1997).

Our study, being typically qualitative, does not start from a hypothesis but from interpreting the subjective experience of fathers and mothers grieving the son who has gone missing and of his posthumous DNA identification. Our intention was to understand the meaning of this trauma in terms of how the grieving parents interpret the phenomenon and what meaning they impart to the son’s missing and posthumous identification.

Psychodynamics of the mourning process for a missing person follows a specific relationship with the lost object, especially regarding the simultaneous transformations of emotional investments into the object Kijak and Pelento (1986). The work of grief for a missing person is accompanied by a mild withdrawal of the libido (disinvestments) from the loved object. At the beginning of confronting the possible loss, the psychic representation of the lost person was hyper-invested. Emotional investments into the lost object simultaneously transmit under the influence of two commands “the person may be dead,” and/ or “the person may be alive.” Consequently, such sudden and specific grief may result in either the destruction of the psychic apparatus or in its restructuring (Buzov, 1989; Cienfuegos & Monelli, 1983; Kijak & Pelento, 1986; Rosenblatt, Walsh, & Jackson, 1976).

Bowlby furthermore indicates a need to differ reactions following a sudden death and gradual and/or anticipated death (Bowlby, 1969; Osterweis, Solomon, & Green, 1987; Parkes, 1998; Zisook, 1987; Zisook & DeVaul, 1985). A sudden death of a child requires a double adjustment in parents to the unexpected death, as well as the direct adjustment to separation. Such adjustments are unlikely with a gradual or slow dying, which enable the parents to gradually prepare for the loss (the so called “anticipating grieving”). A dignified parting from a child influences the subsequent behavior of the parents, but of other children as well (Goldmann-Posh, 1996).

The manner in which the death is accepted significantly depends on the way in which the bereaved has been notified of the death. The loss will be experienced differently, depending on whether the bereaved was present at the moment of the death or was only informed of the death without seeing the body in person. It is less probable that the bereaved will not believe in the person’s death if they were present when the person parted. Disbelief is more present if the act of death took place far away or if an unknown person delivered the news (Bowlby, 1969).

In today’s world, there is a growing number of parents suffering the traumatic experience of the disappearance of a beloved person, be it in connection with war, airplane crash, or terrorism. Thus, a related investigation might provide valuable psychological insights into the processes connected to this trauma.

The aim of our study was to determine (a) how the parents deal with this uncommon experience, and (b) what their expectations are in terms of the outcome. One of the goals was to identify patterns in their traumatic experience that might help to improve the organization of psychological and other support to people with similar experiences, including rape victims and refugees. Using a content and statistical analysis for this purpose can spare the victims from reliving the traumatic experience through repeated interviews, which is often the case, especially in light of the fact that victims previously provided their account of events.

Participants and Methods

Participants

Our study included participants from four villages, two to the north (Bilje and Darda) and two to the south (Laslovo and Ernestinovo) of Osijek, Croatia. In the beginning of 1991, 21 persons went missing from these four villages. The missing persons were taken by force at about the same time and were last seen by the railway in Laslovo, the cellar of a family house in Bilje, the schoolyard in Ernestinovo, and the brick factory in Jagodnjak (Darda). We selected these four neighboring villages and identical events to obtain a homogeneous sample in terms of experience, cultural background, and lifestyle of its residents. In that way, any potential differences between parents’ accounts (such as those between parents whose sons were identified and those whose were not) could be attributed to differences in the traumatic experience with a greater degree of certainty.

The number of participants had not been determined in advance but depended on whether the parents were alive and able or willing to be interviewed. Altogether, we interviewed 29 parents (19 mothers and 10 fathers) of 21 missing sons. At the moment of the interview, 13 mothers and 7 fathers had sons who were still reported missing (15 sons). Six mothers and three fathers had their sons posthumously identified 10 years after their disappearance (6 sons). The average age of the mothers was 65 (range: 53-77) and of the fathers was 67 (range: 60-75) years. The average age of the 21 sons at the time they went missing was 31 years (ranging from 18 to 41).

Methods

Content analysis of information gathered in written, verbal, or visual form from parents whose sons went missing represented a transition, in terms of research, from autobiographical storytelling to the analysis of traumatic content of their memory (testimony). The content analysis included coding of units of testimony, validating these units, and determining reliability between multiple expert coders (Hayes & Krippendorff, 2007; Weber, 1990).

Validity and reliability are the two key criteria for planning, analyzing, and evaluating qualitative research (Patton, 2001; Seale, 1999). As reliability is often evaluated in terms of quantitative research, the quality of qualitative research should be evaluated in terms of credibility, neutrality, confirmability, consistency, dependability, applicability, or transferability (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Seale, 1999; Stenbacka, 2001).

Central to content analysis is intercoder (interrater, interjudge, interobserver) reliability, that is, the degree to which coders agree on the coding of the content (Hayes & Krippendorff, 2007). Higher intercoder reliability reflects greater reliability of the collected data. According to Kolbe and Burnett (1991), an interjudge reliability is commonly perceived as the standard measure of research quality. High levels of disagreement among judges suggest weaknesses in research methods, including poor operational definitions, categories, and judge training. Reliability is the essential criterion in research validation; it either justifies or nullifies research (Hayes & Krippendorff, 2007). Selecting the right reliability coefficient should take into account the number of coders (judges), measurement level or scale, sample size, and collected and missing data (Hayes & Krippendorff, 2007; Lombard, Snyder-Duch, & Bracken, 2004).

Understanding the properties of information is essential for a valid interpretation of each and every reliability coefficient (Krippendorff, 2004a). Krippendorff’s alpha (Krippendorff, 1970, 2004b) has been adopted as a standard for statistical analysis of intercoder reliability in content analysis. It can be used to evaluate the agreement between observers. The obtained Krippendorff’s alpha coefficients reflect the variability of the results attributable to the selection of units in a sample of content units and not to the characteristics of observers (Hayes & Krippendorff, 2007).

Coding parental accounts

Content analysis requires that the recorded content (textual or audiovisual) is categorized (Hayes & Krippendorff, 2007), as categories can reflect a certain state of mind and indicate how common or how extraordinary a certain phenomenon is. The principal investigator conducted the interview with the parents. Having transcribed the audio recordings of parental accounts, the investigator complemented the text with notes taken during the interviews to describe participant behavior: pauses, weeping, standing up, wringing hands, and so on. Furthermore, the principal investigator coded the transcripts with two other expert coders, each independent of the other. We relied on Bowlby’s theory of grief (Bowlby, 1989), except in structuring the interview questions. The questions were structured according to Bowlby’s (1969) classification of conditions affecting the course of mourning. Variables were classified under five heads: (a) the identity and role of the person lost; (b) the age and sex of the person bereaved; (c) the causes and circumstances of the loss (whether the mode of death necessitates a prolonged period of nursing by the bereaved, whether the mode of death results in distortion or mutilation of the body, how information about the death reaches the bereaved, what the relations between the two parties were during the weeks and days immediately prior to the death, and to whom, if anyone, responsibility seems to be assignable); (d) the social and psychological circumstances affecting the bereaved about the time of and after the loss (living arrangements, socio-economic provisions and opportunities, beliefs and practices facilitating or impeding healthy mourning); and (e) the personality of the bereaved, with special reference to his capacities to make love relationships and to respond in stressful situations.

In the transcription, we underlined the sentences and paragraphs that best described the identity of the missing son and the role he played in the life of his parents, the circumstances of his tragedy, attitudes and beliefs of the grieving parents, their social background, and their experiences from earlier life (Bowlby, 1989). In the same way, we underlined the descriptions of emotional experiences caused by the traumatic events that could be isolated as traumatic episodes according to their content and intensity (Hopper & van der Kolk, 2001) (see Figure 1 for a more detailed summary of our parental accounts evaluation procedure).

Figure 1.

Flowchart evaluation of parental accounts.

Using the described methods, we isolated a total of 546 descriptions (content units). Not only was this sample too large for analysis, but also a vast majority of descriptions were identical or highly similar. Such problems in content analysis were previously elaborated in studies of Weber (Crowley & Delfico, 1996; Weber, 1990).

The investigators summarized these identical and similar descriptions into 173 thematic units. These thematic units constituted the main analysis content that was recorded in the Content Assessment Form. To ensure that unambiguous rules of assessment are applied with each topic, we assigned an ordinal scale from 5 to 1 as follows: 5—the statement is absolutely present in the account; 4—the statement is mostly present in the account; 3—the statement is partly present; 2—the statement is barely present; and 1—the statement is not present at all. We opted for the ordinal scale, as it enabled us to organize and categorize qualitative data (content units) in a meaningful way that better describes the content of traumatic memories of the missing and posthumously identified sons. According to Neuendorf (2016), reliability is an important factor in the objective extraction of message characteristics.

Sample size in the pilot test of intercoder reliability

There are several approaches to sampling content units to check the reliability of content. Weber described that the best way to verify the clarity of content is to code small samples for checking and that at least three paragraphs are selected for coding by all coders (Weber, 1990).

Wimmer and Dominick (2013) propose that the content should be analyzed in a pilot study of a sample representing “the entire content” and to move on to coding the rest of the content only after acceptable reliability has been achieved. They believe that such subsample should make 10% to 25% of the entire content. Kaid and Wadsworth (1989), however, believe that the subsample of 5% to 7% should suffice. In terms of potential sampling error, rarely can we find an article that discusses randomized sampling and the probability of sampling error in content analysis (Lacy & Riffe, 1996). An exception is Schutz (1952), who discussed the relationship between the sampling error and sample size. He investigates the probability of chance agreement and how it affects the assessment of reliability, claiming that some agreements between coders are subjected to the law of probability. The criteria for content coding should diminish the influence of chance agreement on assessment reliability. Schutz proposes a formula that enables determining the lowest acceptable level of reliability. This minimum acceptable level includes the probability of chance agreement between coders. His formula also includes probable sampling error (Schutz, 1952). The formula for determining the sampling error and sample size defines the size of the sample at a certain range of reliability. For instance, when the reliability coefficient is equal to or above .80, the sample must have the range that does not go below this coefficient.

n = \frac{(N - 1) {(S E)}^{2} + P Q N}{(N - 1) {(S E)}^{2} + P Q} .

According to this formula, n as a subset of N is the size of the sample (number of content units) required to verify the reliability of agreement between coders. N is the sample size (total number of content units included in analysis), whereas P is the level of agreement and Q is 1 – P.

The first task was to determine the sample of content units for pilot testing out of the total of 173 content units contained in the Content Units Form. In our sample, the aimed p value of reliability was 5%, and confidence interval 95%, so that the standard error SE was 0.05 = 1.64 (SE).

SE = 0.5 / 1.64 \approx 0.03

The results were standardized for normal distribution, in which the reliability of .05 corresponded to Z = 1.64

By obtaining the sampling error (SE) with the above formula, it is possible to calculate sample size (n).

SE = \sqrt{\frac{P Q}{n - 1}} \sqrt{\frac{N - n}{N - 1}} .

Having included the values in the formula, we determined the size of the randomized sample for pilot testing with minimum probability of error. With 173 coded content units, reliability range of .05, and sampling error of .03, the sample size for pilot testing was 62 units:

\begin{array}{l} n = \frac{(173 - 1) {(0.003)}^{2} + 0.90 x 0.10 x 173}{(173 - 1) {(0.003)}^{2} + 0.90} \\ = \frac{(172) (. 0009) + 0.09 (173)}{(173) (. 0009) + 0.9} = 64.2 \approx 62 \end{array}

The number of coders does not affect sampling error, but it does affect errors in measurement. Measurement errors can be determined using one of the following three indices: Scott п, Krippendorff’s alpha, and Cohen kappa. Which of the three indices will be used depends on the measurement scale and on the number of coders. The level of reliability should be given with the standard sampling error (SE) (Lacy & Riffe, 1996).

Pilot reliability testing based on 62 content units

The next task in the content analysis of the memory of the missing sons was to assess intercoder reliability. If the assessment showed satisfactory reliability, we would be able to fine-tune the instrument and coding instructions in the final evaluation. We opted for random sampling of the 62 units for the pilot test and asked three new expert coders to participate (Lombard et al., 2004). The coders were not given any additional instructions regarding the content of the accounts and coding practice nor did they have access to the rest of the content (Lombard et al., 2004). The idea was that if the coders passed the pilot reliability test, they would continue to code the rest of the content (all 173 units). If they failed the test, we would train them additionally, calibrate the instrument, and, if necessary, exclude them from analysis. If the level of reliability remained low, we would have to exclude the content analyzed in the pilot testing from the total sample (Lombard et al., 2004).

Results

By verifying intercoder reliability of five expert coders, we aimed to arrive at conclusions about the uniqueness of the observed phenomenon and its manifestations (characteristics and intensity of emotional episodes stored in the memory about the missing son).

Pilot Test of Intercoder Reliability

Figure 2 shows the results of the pilot test of intercoder reliability for five coders on a randomized sample of 62 topics assumed to have identical or similar meaning in the testimonies of 29 study participants. Judging by the Krippendorff’s alpha index ranging between –.789 and .452, the intercoder reliability was low, which suggested that the sample was unreliable.

Figure 2.

Significance of disagreement between the five coders on the pilot sample of 62 topics.

Disagreement Between the Five Coders in the Pilot Test

Figure 3 compares the disagreement between all five coders. The intercoder reliability pilot test showed that Coders 1 and 4 significantly differed in their assessments from the mean of the 62 topics: Coder 1 in 52 topics and Coder 4 in 51. Coders 2, 3, and 5 differed significantly in their assessments from the mean in 27, 33, and 27 topics, respectively. Coders 1 and 4 were, therefore, excluded from further study.

Figure 3.

Pilot testing of the five coder’s assessment reliability in relation to the assessment of the three coders on a random sample of 62 topics (ranked from high to low values Krippendorff’s alpha).

Figure 3 shows that the remaining three coders did not disagree significantly in their estimates, even after repeated verification of the estimates. In the great majority of topics, their assessments had Krippendorff’s alpha >.30, while in 16 topics it was below zero (ranging from –.1645 to –.6413). Therefore, the three remaining coders carried out the final content analysis of all 173 topics.

Categorizing the Coded Material by Topics With Acceptable Intercoder Reliability

To select coded topics with acceptable intercoder reliability for further study, we set the Krippendorff’s alpha threshold at ≥.50. Of the 173 topics, 23 passed this threshold (Supplementary Table 2 and 3).

Table 1 details the topics with acceptable intercoder reliability. They were present in 11 of the 20 mother accounts (range: .60-.82) and in four of the nine father accounts (range: .66-.75).

Table 1.

The 23 Statements Appearing in the Testimonies in an Identical or Synonymous Meaning, With Krippendorff’s Alpha ≥ .50.

No.	Statements in the testimony
1	Feelings of guilt, because of receiving reimbursement for the missing son.
2	Missing person was the most vulnerable child in the family
4	Inclusion of a seer into their search nourishes their hopes
5	Anonymous calls of people, who introduce themselves as eyewitnesses reinforce their believes about the son being alive
6	Barking of the dog and knocking at the door awaken the hope of the son’s return
8	Keeps the missing son’s objects, clothes and similar things in order to keep the continuity of his live
12	Has the feeling as if the son’s picture was alive while looking at it, he wants to tell her/him something.
13	The living children don’t accept the position the parent assigns to them (they protest)
14	Chooses one person within the household members, who reminds her/him the most of the missing
15	The chosen “memorial candle” reminds not only by symbolic similarity (character, behaviour), but also physically of the missing
16	The dreams’ contents reinforce of the attitudes “the son is alive” or “the son is dead”
17	The personal, the spouse’s and the children’s disease is being associated with the war and the son’s disappearance
18	God and prayer to the Holy Mary are the only relief, which brings their thoughts away from their misery
19	Pilgrimage to Rome, Medugorje (sanctuaries) . . .
20	Confession represents a special act of faith, self-reflection is a source of strength
21	Fear of loosing the burial place: “We have kept this spot . . . ”
22	Mourner describes feelings of premonition in his/her body (bodily sensations) at the time of farewell, feelings that sth. bad is going to happen
24	Disappointment after unsuccessful soldier exchange results in bodily decompensation, dispersion. Doesn’t know what happened after that
25	Mourner doesn’t know what has happened to him/her after hearing the news of the disappearance (looses consciousness, narrowing of consciousness)
26	Doubt about the authenticity of the posthumous remains (bone, tooth)
27	Identification is experienced very dramatically with a series of bizarre details
28	Paranoia that someone else’s remains could be planted
29	Fear that the DNA analysis won’t resolve anything “burrying only by blood that piece od paper”

Verification of Intercoder Reliability for the Selected Topics With Cronbach’s Alpha

It is recommended to use two or more indicators of reliability. We therefore verified our 23 topics with good intercoder reliability (Krippendorff’s alpha ≥.50) with Cronbach’s alpha. It showed acceptable reliability of .7903.

Discussion

Having determined the reliability of coder assessments (Krippendorff’s alpha: .60-.80) enabled us to draw conclusions about the uniqueness of the observed phenomenon and its manifestations, that is, the characteristics and clarity of the emotional episode preserved in the memory of the missing son experienced by the mother and/or the father. The obtained information suggests that this experience significantly differs between the fathers and the mothers, which, in turn, implies gender-driven specificities in experiencing the loss of child. Fathers’ descriptions are devoid of content and emotional substance; they do not reflect the experienced sense of loss. Mothers experience of son’s is fragmented; they cannot integrate postmortal scattered remains (“the bones”) into previously created son’s imago, which points to their inability to mentalized the loss, denial of reality, irrational perceptions, dissociations of observed reality. It is to be assumed that the experience of postmortem identification process contributes to this state of dissociation by both parents and makes the denial of death stronger.

These differences are most evident in the emphasis on certain topics. In the mothers’ accounts, these topics have the (near) identical meaning, while in the fathers’ accounts, they are fragmented narratives that stop short of remembering, and end up in auto-irony or tears. Fathers describe their traumatic experience from the point of view of “silent observer,” relying on narrative stereotypes about “the war,” “victim,” and “other people.” They also shun from religious, existential, and any other type of reflections about the loss. Their accounts point to the absurdity of their own tragedies and of entire human existence (just like Camus’s “I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.”). Fathers experience their son’s death as loss of control over their own life.

Some authors, such as Bibby (2001) and Doka and Martin (1998), report similar expressions of grief in men. In short, fathers react to their child’s death by trying to protect their own self through constant questioning of themselves (self-search). Their failure to articulate their grief can be seen as strength by some or weakness by others, or, as some suggest, playing their role in the society (Gal, 1989).

Unlike the mothers, the fathers did not find comfort in praying. Mothers’ accounts, in turn, are dominated by single recurring experiences (topics). These flashbulb memories become central to the narrative about the missing son (Brown & Kulik, 1977) and ensure connection with other memories and experiences. The mother’s statement depicts her endeavor to round off the story about the life and victimization of her son based on scarce data at her disposal.

Occasionally, the narrative about the missing son looks like a few different stories, as if each emotional episode makes a story of its own. The story becomes a detailed expression of the mother’s emotional setup, or part thereof.

According to Porot (1984), this type of dissociation is a result of the inability of synthetic integration of dynamic components that form oneself, or the consequence of the state in which “I” does not accept the primordial components of personality. Such a state corresponds to the state of mental alienation of dislocating “I.” It is necessary to point out that the mothers previously did not suffer from any psychological disease, nor did they show any clinical indication. It is possible to assume that the personal experience of postmortem identification contributed to their present state of dissociation. In that sense, four mothers refused to accept the DNA results of identification.

Janet believed that dissociation was the crucial element in adjustment of a person to a traumatic experience of loss (van der Kolk, van der Hart, & Marmar, 1996). He made such conclusions by analyzing patients who have undergone one or more traumatic experiences. Such events caused strong emotions, and their recalling by the patients demanded great efforts. The difficulties were present in the narrative expression of the traumatic event. Such behavior is called the “fear of recalling.” Dissociation was developed to prevent traumatic reactions. It led to a splitting of the traumatic memory to reduce it into the normal thinking limits. Janet deemed that dissociation does not result from an active repression but from the reduced mental capacities that result from strong emotions. A traumatized person lacks abilities to consciously integrate the experience of the trauma. For as long as there is a gap in the flow of the memories, the trauma cannot be translated into personal narration but will continue disturbing the perception, leading to obsessive preoccupations and re-somatization of the experience. This somatosensory element of the trauma can return to the conscience only when the person confronts the traumatic memory (van der Kolk et al., 1996). A traumatic memory differs from an everyday experience by its prenarrative quality. Breuer and Freud (2009) describe this phenomenon of translating of a traumatic event into verbal as “catharsis.” Namely, verbal expressing of emotions, that is, bringing pathogenous traumatic memories into consciousness, whereby verbalization of the disturbing emotions related to the event causes emotional relief. The traumatized persons’ notions indicate that more complex emotional experience affects the working-through ability in the memory at the verbal, that is, explicit level. The memory, among others, may be organized as the implicit, that is, perceptive level, with no verbal component associated.

Mothers’ memories of the son’s disappearance are vivid and clearly separated from other events in their lives. Testimonies about the missing son can be viewed as collections of several, distinct stories, each accompanied by its own set of emotional and sensorial imagery. This episodic, flashbulb imagery seems to capture the original reaction to the disappearance and postmortem DNA identification on a symbolic plane. Flashbulb memories, therefore, become central to the disappearance narrative and are then easily linked to other thematically or emotionally similar episodes. Thus, this ontological narrative of the disappearance and postmortem identification contains, in addition to societal, an interpersonal determinant. This stands in contrast to the traditional narration, in which storytelling is seen as a limited form of expressing sorrow for the missing son.

Our study has shown that content analysis can be a valuable tool for identifying specific motifs in the grieving narrative of mothers and fathers who have lost their child in such an unnatural way and in such horrid circumstances, in which there is neither a body nor a grave to turn to, and in a mode of death resulting in the distortion or mutilation of the body (cf. Bowlby, 1969). The experience of postmortem identification through DNA analysis, although narratively distinct, contributes to this state of dissociation by both parents and makes the denial of death even stronger.

Supplemental Material

Supplementary__300119 – Supplemental material for Traumatic Memory of One’s Son Gone Missing in War: Content Analysis Using Krippendorff’s Alpha

Supplemental material, Supplementary__300119 for Traumatic Memory of One’s Son Gone Missing in War: Content Analysis Using Krippendorff’s Alpha by Slavica Kozina, Martin Kowalski, Mirela Vlastelica, Tonći Mastelić and Josip A. Borovac in SAGE Open

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the mothers and fathers of Croatian soldiers gone missing in the Croatian war for independence (1991-1995) despite the enormous grief and tribulations they were going through in the search of their beloved ones. We also thank the following people for their assistance in coding the accounts and reviewing the manuscript: assistant professor Vesna Antičević, psychotherapist Najda Cajo, psychotherapist Helena Dedić, assistant professor Iris Jerončić Tomić, psychotherapist Željko Jurin, assistant professor Mario Malički, and Professor Matko Marušić.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

ORCID iD

Martin Kowalski

Author Biographies

Slavica Kozina, PhD, MSc, an assistant professor has a permanent job position on Department of Psychological Medicine of University of Split School of Medicine. She studied psychology at Department of Psychology at faculty of art in Zadar University (diploma degree 1995). She completed postgraduate study of Biomedicine at Zagreb University School of Medicine and received the master degree in 2005. (Thesis: Externalisation of the process of bereaving in circumstances of losses of sons in the war), and doctoral degree in 2011 at Zagreb University School of Medicine. (Thesis: Mothers’ and fathers’ traumatic memories of the disappearance and post-mortem identification of their sons: a qualitative analysis 10 years later). She is interested in war trauma approach, especially in traumatic memories, and published few scientific papers in int’l publications about war trauma.

Martin Kowalski is currently in his final year of Medical Studies in English at the University of Split, School of Medicine. Despite his activies in a wide range of research topics, his main area of interest both clinically and academically is ophthalmology.

Mirela Vlastelica, MD, PhD, MSc is working as a psychiatrist in the city of Split and also holds a position of an associate professor at the University of Split School of Medicine. Not only does she have years of experience in psychotherapy and group therapy through her clinical work, but she is also a invaluable part of the team at the department for psychological medicine. She is interested in psychotherapy, group therapy and psychological trauma.

Tonći Mastelić, MD is member of the department of psychological medicine at the University of Split School of Medicine. He obtained his medical degree at the same institution and is active in the field of psychiatry and psychology. His expertise and research endeveour are in the field of psychological trauma.

Josip A. Borovac, MD, BSc is currently an intern at University Hospital Center Split in Croatia. He obtained a degree in Molecular biology from the State University of New York, USA and a degree in Medicine at the University of Split School of Medicine, Croatia. His area of research and clinical interest are cardiovascular disorders.

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