Searching videos
Please Sign In or Create an account
Islamic belief in healing of Trauma; A case study of an Afghan Refugee

Islamic belief in healing of Trauma; A case study of an Afghan Refugee

Islamic beliefs and traditions can provide an essential framework of meaning that help individuals to sustain life in times of great distress. Spiritual healing is an essential element of Islamic faith.

This lecture explores how religious and spiritual beliefs can be used in the healing of trauma.  It draws extensively on a case study of an Afghan refugee, a 58 year-old male client who had experienced the darkest side of humanity through the persecution of his family members and his own torture and trauma experiences.

The client presented at STARTTS with post traumatic stress symptoms, major depression, sever panic attacks, loss and grief and a number of physical and settlement issues. The client is a Sunni Muslim with strong religious beliefs.  Due to the intensity of his trauma, he was unable to conceptualise his experience in terms of his faith and was therefore experiencing difficulties in finding meaning in his life.

In this lecture Nooria Mehraby explores her work with this highly traumatised client combining bio-psycho-social Interventions with the client’s religious and spiritual beliefs in a cognitive behaviour therapeutic framework.

The presenter draws upon 46 therapeutic sessions over a period of three years. The model was sensitive to the clients’ frame of reference, but also applied Western psychological tools, such as cognitive restructuring to the religious values and beliefs of the client. The use of this culturally sensitive model facilitated recovery from the impact of excessive trauma, loss and dislocation.


STARTTS 2009

Polyvagal Theory 1: Basic principles (phylogeny, neuroception, dissolution, social engagement system)

What if many of your troubles could be explained by an automatic reaction in your body to what's happening around you? what if an understanding of several mental and emotional disorders, ranging from autism to panic attacks, lay in a new theoretical approach of how the nervous system integrates and regulates bodily and psychological processes? Stephen W. Porges, Ph.D., thinks it could be so. Dr. Porges, professor of psychiatry at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and director for that institution's Brain-Body Center, has spent much of his life searching for clues to the way the brain operates, and has developed what he has termed Polyvagal Theory.

An Interview with Dr Sue Carter on Oxitocin and Social Monogamy

Dr Sue Carter is a neuroscientist and Co-Director of the

An Interview with Amber Gray on Dance Movement Therapy and Social Engagement.

Movement is a way of organising experience and a way of facilitating healing in traumatised individuals and communities.  Amber Gray is a dance/movement therapist, working with the ways that trauma invades the body and our capacity to move in our worlds.

Refugee Women; War, Rape and Sexual Abuse (in Conversation)

Refugee women and their dependent children account for 80 per cent of the world’s refugees. Refugee women are arrested, abducted, imprisoned, persecuted, tortured, raped, sexually abused and sold for prostitution. Rape and sexual abuse is the most common form of systematized torture used against women, which are used as weapons of war.  

Mental Health, Conflict Management and Social Action (2) (in Conversation)

Dr Dinka Corkalo Biruski discusses a capacity building program that aimed to empower key community figures to become leaders of change. The approach was based on community psychosocial work, conflict management and social action in post-conflict divided communities.

Sekai Holland in conversation with Sejla Tukelija

Voices of Trauma: on contextual thinking of complex posttraumatic damage (In conversation)

Although modern psychiatry, based on the science of the western world, has many universal values, serious gaps and problems can arise when practised in situations where helpers and victims are of different cultural backgrounds.

Recently Added

Defining the concept of spirituality among Filipino counselors and clients.

Sport and physical activity in the treatment of refugee trauma survivors of torture and trauma

Community acceptance of refugees in a new refugee resettlement location, Armidale, NSW

Theme and Variations: The way the Complex Traumatic past becomes the Complex Traumatic present

Long walk to health: Working with the survivors of refugee trauma with a history of early childhood abuse

Limits in Neurofeedback Rehabilitation: What we need to know

Neuro-correlates of the ‘Self’ and Implications for Neuro-psychotherapists