Psychological trauma represents a discrepancy between external threat and individual’s capacity of coping with it. War and terrorism increase the risk of traumatic experiences due to potential bodily injury and other adversities. Beside singular events, war and terrorism may also lead to chronic psychological processes due to traumatization in childhood and adverse experiences affecting a large number individuals. They constitute Type I, Type II, and Type III traumatization, respectively. The prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder is reported as approximately 10% during the first few months among individuals who were exposed to a terrorist act of bombing. These rates are higher among women and refugees who escape from war. Psychological interventions for those populations should consider the existent natural and social coping mechanisms as a way of healing. Hence, the response to these extraordinary events should not be pathologized and the role of survivor rather than victim should be supported. The window of tolerance in regard to emotions should be considered in all interventions, anger should be managed while mourning should be facilitated. Government, media, medical system, and legal institutions should participate in management of the crisis. Maladaptive reactions should be managed on an individual basis. Mental circulus vitious created by cumulative traumatization can be solved by re-organization of perceived priorities and by widening the perspective. Anger and social disintegration leading to disturbances of daily life are predictors of crisis in mass trauma. In well chosed cases, effective psychotherapeutic techniques tailored for processing of traumatic experiences may be of help. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is one of these tools. Appropriate intervention to maladaptive developments would repair the broken cognitive and emotional links and assist in prevention of further damage which may exceed individual psychopathology and may affect the future of the society in subtle ways.

Keywords: posttraumatic stress disorder, psychological trauma, terrorism, war