Understanding Child Maltreatment Across Ethnic Minority Communities in Australia: Physical Abuse, Neglect, Witnessing Domestic and Family Violence and Child Sexual Abuse

The Alternatives to Violence Project: Experiential Workshops for Promoting Psychosocial Transformation and their Application with NSW STARTTS.

T.E.A Gathering (Talking. Empowering. Advocating) - African Young Women Perspective and Experiences on Issues Related to Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence.

Rohingas Torture Victims, now New World Attention, Seeking Urgent Humanitarian Help.

Before the Healing – Barriers to Protection for Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Survivors Exiled in Hong Kong.

Multicultural Young Women’s Group: Our Body, Mind and Rights.

STARTTS Masterclass 14 Nov 2018

A continuous recording of the meeting held by STAARTS on Nov 14, 2018

Reconciliation between groups, the development of inclusive caring, and altruism born of suffering.

ln this talk I will describe what I regard as universal principles and practices of reconciliation. These have to be applied differentially to specific contexts or conditions. I will then discuss our reconciliation projects in East Africa, especially Rwanda but also Burundi and the Congo. We have conducted workshops/trainings, and developed educational radio dramas and informational radio programs, based on our theories about the origins and prevention of genocide, and trauma and healing. The effects of these interventions were evaluated in research, and the programs further shaped by the findings.

Mental health care: between reality transitar subjective, objective and shared - singular of the community

We are living in a world where distrust of the reflections affective, emotional and mental are ignored. Different become adversaries and even personal enemies. Generally, such a confrontation resulting in personal insults and aggression. The climate of intolerance and mutual exclusion lead us to justify the attacks against people, including today, the disloyalty, the removal of the common good. And so we suffer all this atmosphere of intolerance and mutual distrust that often breathe in public institutions, the workplace, at meetings and confrontations ineffable. Among these cases, psychotherapy with scientific seriousness interdisciplinary proposal seeks to create favorable conditions and a climate of tolerance, mutual respect and fair confrontation as possible, where you can find ways to dialogue, conducting research in the light of truth to the people .

Lateral violence and Indigenous peoples.

Lateral violence occurs when the violence associated with oppression is internalised by those who are oppressed, and redirected between the members of the oppressed group. Among Aboriginal and Torres

Supporting the Resilience of Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Minors in Australia.

Risky business: Coping strategies and resilience amongst survivors of structural inequalities and precarious lives

Globalisation has produced a 'risk society' that has increased structural inequalities within and between countries, and made the quality of life poorer for billions of children, women and men inhabiting planet Earth.  Despite the doom and gloom, people have developed coping strategies, strengths and resiliences that minimise their vulnerabilities and enable them to survive.  Resilience has been defined as the capacity to surmount adversity.

How to open a can of worms: enquiry about past abuse - how and why

Past trauma, especially childhood abuse and neglect, is emerging as a key source of vulnerability for most emotional and mental disorders, even the most severe. All of which have become regarded as entirely biological or behavioural in recent years. Little regard has been paid to providing skills for assessing or responding to past adversities in clinical training programmes. Research findings will be presented about clinician responses to the discussion of client's past abuse which indicates high levels of clinician discomfort, and identifies that there are significant barriers in doing so. Evidence about the effects of a range of adverse experiences, their neurological and affective sequal will be presented and the possible clinical presentations of these effects in adults, along with differential diagnoses.

A therapist in therapy - minefields and goldmines

As a consumer of therapy, what do you do with feeling totally exposed in a first session - simply by the therapist's way of being? How can you trust when the physical layout is not inviting but distancing? What if you feel criticised and judged; or worse, abused? All natural and perhaps frequent reactions but what if the therapist is unaware? Or aware and silent? Is it all grist for the mill to work through? Or unnecessary angst? What if the promise of a therapist is unrealised? How does a consumer of therapy begin the onerous task of seeking yet again? And again? What unrealistic expectations are brought into the next room? What damage are therapists doing without knowing? What good are they doing without knowing? Can they ever really know? These questions are explored in a personal and reluctant journey into therapy by a beginning therapist.

Trauma and attachment in infancy.

In this presentation Professor Barnett will review basic attachment principles: organised secure and insecure, as well as disorganised and unresolved patterns, and the implications of distorted or disrupted patterns in parents and infants. Everyone experiences loss, disruptions and other traumatic events, but the crucial factor is whether these are resolved or not. The Adult Attachment Interview material reveals loss and other traumatic events, and considers the question of resolution or lack of it for the individual. What is trauma for an infant? What does an infant or parent have to do to survive trauma? What are the impacts? How do we help both parent and infant to survive?

Trauma in War, Trauma in Peace: Human Right to Healing

Trauma Informed Therapeutic Yoga Program for Bhutanese Torture Survivors - A Community Initiative.

STARTTS Masterclass 14 Nov 2018

A continuous recording of the meeting held by STAARTS on Nov 14, 2018

Conversation between Rachel Paran and Yishai Shalif: How faith and spirituality help in coping

In this conversation, Yishai Shalif and Rachel

The secret of resilience: Personality and developmental factors

Resilience refers to successful adaptation despite adversity, ability to overcome hardships and trauma, developmental competencies or even blossoming in harsh conditions. Abundant research is available on the child-family-and society-related factors that enhance resilience in various hardships including parental mental illness, childhood abuse and major trauma of war and terrorism.  In addition to these explanatory factors, it is urgent to understand processes and dynamic mechanisms that underlie the human resilient capacities.

Coping with chronic adverse experience in childhood and adolescence

The paper is based on a long-standing research and clinical work with children and adolescents who were exposed to chronic adverse circumstances linked to war in ex-Yugoslavia, exile and deteriorated social context and to abuse and/or neglect in family. The main groups of factors influencing the outcome of traumatic experience were: dimensions of traumatic experience, child's own resources, family network and the social context. Emotional and cognitive maturity of the child, high self-esteem, secure attachment, child's ability to use spontaneously natural ways of healing like play, dreams, creative expression, were the most often recognized protective factors, while the history of previous trauma and pre-existing psychopathology were the most important vulnerability factors.

Support strategies for women affected by war-related sexualised violence

Medica Mondiale is an international non-governmental organization who supports women and girls who have been sexually violated during war and civil conflict. It also provides services for women affected by other forms of gender-based violence in post-war and conflict zones. medica mondiale built and supports women’s psychosocial and counselling and training centres in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Liberia and DRCongo and supports small scale psychosocial projects for women affected by violence in Cambodia, East Timor, Iraq, Israel, Nepal, Mexico, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Turkey and Uganda.

Art and Expressive Therapies Group with Assyrian-Chaldean Adolescents

This workshop will present the process and outcomes of therapeutic group intervention for Assyrian-Chaldean  adolescents who experienced dislocation, prolonged exposure to war and associated trauma.

Psychosocial intervention in extreme military violence: Effectiveness in enhancing children's socio-emotional competence

Although researchers agree that war and military violence form a serious burden on child well-being and mental health, many are seeking positive resources and resilience among traumatized children. Our knowledge is increasing about protective and healing processes among traumatized children, and it is time to introduce resilience and positive coping into effective interventions. Accordingly, the presentation focuses on effectiveness of a school-based intervention in enhancing children's socio-emotional competence. The health promotion intervention known as Child-to-Child approach was applied to Palestinian children in Gaza in times of intensive military violence. The method provides children an opportunity to learn about and to teach their peers and younger siblings about basic health care. lt provides strategies, tools and activities that are aimed at increasing personal and collective efficacy. The health promotion strategy is combined with brief cognitive behavioural therapeutic approach to alleviate trauma symptoms.

Family reunification in exile - a challenge for family therapists

Families are often separated by war, conflict and forced migration. Many families have lived through years of uncertainty and suffering, and sometimes also experienced long bureaucratic processes before they are finally reunited in a new society. In addition many family members have been exposed to traumatic events prior to reunification, such as imprisonment, torture and war. The reunification in itself also presents the family with new challenges. Whereas one part of the family has lived in the new country for some time, the newly arrived family member(s) meets the host country for the first time. Finding the way back into family life in a new and complex context, may represent a combination of great joy, relief and difficult stress. Families with these experiences have been interviewed as part of a project on intervention with reunited families.

New Zealand Approaches to the Provision of Mental Health and Well Being Services for People from Refugee Backgrounds

Youth Mentoring: Maximizing Engagement, Improving Resilience and Social Inclusion.

Physical Activity for Health Among Torture and Trauma Survivors: an opportunity for treatment and prevention.

Future In Our Hands: Volleyball Project which Empowered Girls from Refugee Background.

Supporting Wellbeing and Social Inclusion for Young People of Refugee Backgrounds: evaluation of the Ucan2 Program.

How Exposure to Injustice may Impact on Mental Health.

Finding Wellbeing through Cultural Strengths, Empowerment and Trauma Healing: a group for Congolese single women resettling in a regional Australian town.

An Islamic Perspective on Human Development.

Can faith as well as human psychological

Spiritual Dissonance – application to provider and patient care

There is increasing acceptance that the spiritual dimension of humans influences health, especially mental health. But, many people equate the spiritual with religion; others do not. The four domains model of spiritual health/well-being will be presented, with reference to the quality of relationships people have with themselves, others, nature and/or God (PhD, University of Melbourne, 1998).

A successful model of intervention

"lnterpersonal relationships are vital. Without interpersonal bonds neither individual nor species survival would have been possible". (Yalom 2005) "The 'harvest' of group work is change/growth" (Yalom 2005) This symposium would venture to look at the relevance of group interventions as building capacity within the individual of coping and resilience in the face of forced displacement and acculturation. The accompanying mental health issues are implicitly recognised. In Yalom's "The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy" (2005) he speaks of the mechanisms of change within group work: (a) members value deeply acceptance and support they receive from the group (cohesiveness) (b) Members dealing with social isolation may obtain greater benefit from the group (c) The group is an important environment for learning to take place.

Exploring an Eclectic Approach to Establish Best Practice for Clinicians Working with Asylum Seekers Navigating the Immigration Process in New Zealand.

Trauma Informed Therapeutic Yoga Program for Bhutanese Torture Survivors - A Community Initiative.