Challenging paradigms - healing trauma in the Middle East: Janet Wright at TEDxFoCo

Описание: Janet Wright, a Fort Collins clinical social worker, was inspired by the courage of another therapist, Francine Shapiro, PhD. In spite of overwhelming resistance from the established psychological community, Shapiro developed a now-proven mental health treatment for trauma, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). Based on Shapiro's work, Wright conducted a field study treating 30 children using EMDR in Palestine for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Based on the results of the study, Palestinian clinicians asked to be trained in EMDR in order to provide trauma treatment in their community. Over $50,000 in grants secured by Wright enabled an international team to provide the training in Palestine. Members of the EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Program (emdrhap.org) were further inspired by Arab Muslim and Christian therapists already working side by side to heal trauma in their community.

Challenges: How to treat ongoing traumatic stress; how to interrupt the generational transmission of trauma; and how to support therapists throughout the Middle East who experience human-made political violence and other forms of trauma?

Results: the first all-Arab EMDR training team and over 200 therapists trained to use EMDR to treat trauma in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and beyond.

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