Healing Trauma across Cultures: A Contextual and Developmental Approach to Assessment and Treatment

SEMINAR OUTLINE
Applying the contextual/developmental paradigm in assessment and treatment of posttraumatic damage has several advantages:

1. Avoidance of the or/or dichotomy (PTSD or another diagnostic category), and application of the and/and paradigm (PTSD as a continuum with many different facets) creates a broader view of survivors’ problems and helps understanding them in the wholeness of human existence.
2. This paradigm invites a clinician to inquire into relational aspects of the individual survivor (partner, family, society), thereby anchoring consequences of trauma in a context that goes beyond the intrapsychic damage.
3. Clinician establishes a better contact with a survivor, because his/her case conceptualisation matches with a survivor’s explanatory model more adequately. This leads to a better compliance with treatment.
4. Inclusion of cultural, political and social issues in assessment and treatment is of great importance, since poverty, marginalisation, unemployment and powerlessness may cause psychological and psychiatric problems, regardless of the existence of traumatic experiences, and influence identity and help-seeking behaviour.

SESSION 1 Development of the contextual/developmental framework for understanding of complex posttraumatic psychological damage: from reductionism in psychiatry and psychology to new and complex paradigms

SESSION 2 The application of the contextual/developmental model in assessment and treatment of complex posttraumatic psychological damage: from theory to practice

SESSION 3 Practical case illustration of contextual/developmental model in treating complex PTSD and other mental health disorders: live demonstration

SESSION 4 Transference and countertransference phenomena in trauma treatment: from individual therapeutic encounters to dynamics in teams/organisations treating survivors of extreme violence