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Show all3. DEBATES AND PANELS
3.1. DEBATES
Ulrich Schnyder and Stevan Hobfoll; Chair: Dean Ajduković:
Promoting Resilience: Treatment or Prevention?
Miranda Olff, Frank Nipkau, and Thomas Weber; Chair: Bruce Shapiro
Mental Health Professionals and the Media: Collaboration or Conflict?
3.2. PANELS
Elana Newman, Joop de Jong, Stevan Hobfoll:
Getting it Right as an “Outsider”: Culturally Appropriate Training, Interventions, and Research in Volatile Areas
Gavin Rees, Stuart Turner, David Loyn:
Torture as a Public Act
Jelisaveta-Sanja Rolovic, Dinka Corkalo Biruski, Mimoza Shanini, Sandra Kukic:
Lessons about National Identity: Post War Reflections of Therapists and Researchers from the Former Yugoslavia
Suzanna Rose, Chris Freeman, Simon Proudlock:
Should we be Creating more Trauma Informed Mental Health Services?
3. DEBATES AND PANELS
3.1. DEBATES
Panelist: Ulrich Schnyder and Stevan Hobfoll
Chair: Dean Ajduković
Promoting Resilience: Treatment or Prevention?
Treatment” Position - Ulrich Schnyder
Resilience can be defined as a personality characteristic that moderates the negative effects of stress, and promotes adaptation. Resilient individuals have been described as possessing self-esteem, self-confidence, curiosity, control over the environment, satisfying interpersonal relationships and a repertoire of problem-solving skills. They also tend to show more adaptive behaviors in the areas of social functioning, morale and somatic health. Moreover, the following psychosocial factors have been associated with resilience to stress: a) positive emotions such as humor and optimism, b) cognitive flexibility, including positive cognitive reappraisal and acceptance, c) spirituality, including religion, spirituality, and altruism, d) social support, and e) an active coping style. Gratitude is another positive emotion that could be protective against the development of PTSD. Some neurobiological factors including a reduced CRH (Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone) release, and a high DHEA (Dehydroepiandroster-one)/Cortisol ratio are also probably involved in resilience. All these features are potentially amenable to change. Therefore, psychotherapy for PTSD and other trauma-related mental disorders, in addition to their evidence-based trauma-focused approach (exposure, cognitive interventions), should also aim at promoting resilience. Well-Being Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and the mindfulness-based approaches appear to be promising conceptualizations of such treatment strategies. Finally, moderate physical exercise, due to its positive effects on the cardiovascular system, the immune system, mood and cognition, should complement traditional psychosocial interventions for traumatized individuals.
Creating, Sustaining and Promoting Resource Caravan Passageways: A Public Health Battle against Trauma-Toxic Environments” - Stevan Hobfoll
Resource caravan passageways are the environmental conditions that support, foster, enrich and protect the resources of individuals, families, and organizations, or that detract, undermine, obstruct, or impoverish people's resource reservoirs. Public mental health must be a public watchdog. It must create resource enriching environments, and it must intervene in the social circumstances that undermine personal, social and material resource accumulation, that contribute to resource loss, in particular where environments are trauma toxic.
Panelist: Miranda Olff, Frank Nipkau and Thomas Weber
Chair: Bruce Shapiro
Mental Health Professionals and the Media: Collaboration or Conflict?
One day in March 2009, a young man went on a killing spree in Winnenden, a small town in Germany. The shooting left sixteen people dead and tore a sudden hole in the community. Such high profile, critical incidents — school shootings, terrorist attacks or highly-mediatised child abuse scandals — challenge journalists and trauma care specialists alike. On the one hand, the prolonged media attention provides opportunities to give the public crucial information on the management of trauma. It may even offer some space for those not directly affected to gain valuable insight into the experiences of those who are. But bad reporting may compound individual distress and give credence to inaccurate myths with adverse consequences for public health. Journalists and health professionals speak their own languages and start from different places. It can be hard to fully appreciate the constraints that the alternate side operates under.
In the months that followed the shooting in Winnenden, local journalists and trauma professionals began a series of talks, which shaped the way that those involved responded to the story's continuing aftermath. Drawing on insight gained from that situation, we want to discuss the conflicts and opportunities that may arise on other occasions when journalists and mental health professionals need to speak to each other. Where, if anywhere, is the common ground?
3.2. PANELS
Newman Elana, University of Tulsa; de Jong, Joop, University of Amsterdam/University of Boston; Hobfoll, Stevan, Rush Medical College
Getting it Right as an “Outsider”: Culturally Appropriate Training, Interventions, and Research in Volatile Areas
Trauma experts from outside a culture can offer technical information to individuals and communities as well as learn from communities living in volatile areas. However, outsiders can also do more harm than good. This panel discusses the merits and pitfalls of conducting trainings, interventions, and research cross-culturally. Each panelist will describe work conducted, successes, and challenges and conclude with 5 pieces of advice for the audience to consider. Then audience participants will be invited to raise issues and offer advice. De Jong will discuss his experiences developing culturally appropriate psycho-social and mental health and research programs in over 20 countries. Hobfoll will discuss his experiences conducting research in countries with people experiencing ongoing violence. Newman will discuss her experiences with the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma offering short trainings for local journalists covering ongoing natural and human rights adversities.
Rees Gavin, Dart Centre Europe; Stuart Turner, Trauma Clinic London; David Loyn, BBC
Torture as a Public Act
Torture usually occurs in private, hidden locations, far from the public eye, but it is, in reality, a deeply public act, whose intended meanings and impact extend further than the closed walls of the detention cell. This panel will take the discussion of torture beyond the immediate circle of victim and perpetrator and ask how the rest of society is involved in the practice of torture.
Gavin Rees, Director of Dart Centre Europe, will present an overview of recent history, charting how and why the popular imagination of torture has swung repeatedly between conceptions that inhibit it and those that facilitate it. Stuart Turner, Past President of the ESTSS, speaking from his clinical experience, will describe how the community outside of detention are often the implicit targets. Regimes use torture as a method of sowing mistrust and breaking down the social bonds that make organised opposition possible. The suspicion of betrayal that shrouds the release of victims may greatly complicate their reintegration. David Loyn, the BBC's International Development Correspondent, will discuss the practical difficulties journalists face in reporting torture in the context of asymmetric warfare and will consider what questions we all need to ask if public understanding is to be more accurate and insightful.
Rolovic Jelisaveta-Sanja, Private Psychotherapy Practice; Corkalo Biruski, Dinka, University of Zagreb; Shanini, Mimoza; Kukic, Sandra, SOS, Continental Office CEE/CIS/Baltics
Lessons about National Identity: Post War Reflections of Therapists and Researchers from the Former Yugoslavia
Critical lessons can be learned from how citizens struggle to clarify their multiple relationships to country, community, ethnic/national identity, family and self in postwar societies. Therapists and researchers from Croatia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia will explore how transformations in the meanings of ethnic/national identity have affected their professional work and everyday lives. How feelings about one's country and ethnic identity facilitates or interferes with clinical and research work on individual and collective trauma will be analyzed using research data from the region and personal and clinical examples. Links between issues of human rights and national/ ethnic identity in the region of the former Yugoslavia will be discussed. Emphasis will be given to the roles professionals can play in the healing processes of the individuals and the communities and to the intra-and interpersonal world of the therapist exposed to suffering caused by war trauma. Lessons learned while working in divided communities will be highlighted in order to outline guidelines for both clinical work and research practice in situations of “competing identities”.
Rose Suzanna, Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust; Freeman, Chris, Royal Edinburgh Hospital; Proudlock, Simon, Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
Should We Be Creating More Trauma Informed Mental Health Services?
Background: It is known that exposure to a traumatic event can lead to a range of subsequent serious and sometimes chronic range of psychopathology such as PTSD, depression, substance misuse, anxiety disorders, personality distortions and psychosis (Van der Kolk, 2005; Read et.al., 2008; Mueser et al., 2004). Recently, attention has been paid to the physical health sequelae to exposure to psychological trauma (Schnurr, et al., 2007; Kimerling et al., 2002). Current Position: given the data outlined above, it seems surprising that, until relatively recently, this issue has not been specifically addressed within the UK mental health services. “Refocusing the Care Programme: Approach and Practice Guidelines’ was published by the UK Department of Health in March 2008 and became policy in October 2008. While this approach arguably should be applauded there is anecdotal evidence that this exploration is still not undertaken with most of our patients. More recently, in Scotland, the Scottish parliament is consulting with clinicians and others in working towards formally creating a more trauma informed mental health service. Discussion: While the evidence to support the move to a more trauma informed mental health service appears compelling, at least within the UK, this evidence has largely failed to materialise. The panel will discuss different aspects of this debate.
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European Journal of Psychotraumatology eISSN 2000-8066
European Journal of Psychotraumatology Supplement eISSN 2000-8066, ISSN 2000-8198 (print)
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Responsible editor: Miranda Olff