Educating refugee leaders on trauma, PTSD and recovery. Why this approach?

noted here. This program, designed for refugees to participate in groups of 15-20, will be conducted with cultural sensitivity and combine psycho-educational curriculum on trauma with a body-centered method of trauma recovery.

Toward that ultimate goal, Phase 2 will be Educating Refugee Leaders about Trauma, PTSD and Recovery.

By assisting refugee leaders in developing a more in-depth understanding of trauma they will be more able to recognize on an individual, family and community level when struggles have their origin in unresolved traumatic experiences and require specific types of intervention.

Refugee leaders also need this information in order to best attend to their own well-being. They too have survived atrocities and despite demonstrating phenomenal resiliency, sometimes these experiences can take a toll in ways hard to recognize. If not outright trauma, survivor’s guilt alone can be incredibly difficult to deal with.

The inner development of compassion, caring and sensitivity to the pain of humanity emerges as a result of recovering from one’s own painful experiences of life.
– David Berceli, PhD

A healthy refugee community requires healthy, well-informed leadership. For our efforts to be successful, we need them to understand and support our approach. That means we want them to have an abbreviated first-hand experience of what participation in our program will be like.

Benefits from this approach

1. Leaders will gain a deeper understanding of trauma, PTSD, and the recovery process
2. They will be more able to recognize symptoms and side effects of unresolved trauma and PTSD (e.g. nightmares, depression, anxiety, moodiness, difficulty concentrating, intrusive memories, body pain, substance abuse, domestic violence etc.)
3. Be better advocates and sources of referral for our future Trauma Recovery Program for Refugees

For more information about this program, see Phase 2: Educating Refugee Leaders about Trauma, PTSD & Recovery.

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