The treatment of traumatized population groups should generally only be carried out in the respective native language and by therapists familiar with local living conditions. Therefore, their training is at the center of our projects.
In doing so, various input qualifications of the participants have to be considered. They range from those of the psychiatrist or physician, who until now prescribed pharmaceuticals and experienced clinical psychologists to the young social worker without formal training in a refugee camp.
Accordingly, the training concepts have to be flexibly adapted to the respective situations. They have in common that they are guided by European training standards.
The training starts with a basic course in Psychotraumatology, which introduces the special problem of the processing of traumatic experiences. In addition, the stabilization of the patient is focused as a basis for every trauma treatment.
The core element of the second course is the first part of an EMDR training, a method which, with the help of bilateral stimulation (eye movements, sounds or short touches), promotes the development of psychological powers (resources) and the handling of stressful (traumatic) experiences.
The main theme in the third training, which requires appropriate clinical experience, is the diagnosis and treatment of complex traumatization and dissociative disorders.
A specific feature of all trainings is that there are months of active application in the treatment of clients between the one-week training sections. In order to check the quality of the treatments of the participants, regular supervision is carried out between the training sessions.
A further attribute of the training and a crucial prerequisite for the training concept to be carried out, after a multi-year build-up phase in the respective country, is the inclusion of already trained local therapists as supervisors / facilitators or as trainers in the subsequent trainings.
In the last two years Trauma Aid has been increasingly confronted with the fact that in many crisis areas there is no sufficient specialist staff available to meet the high demand for psychological care. We have responded to this with a training concept for non-professional care personnel called TPSS+:
T) Trauma - focused
(PSS) Psychosocial Support
(+) plus use of EMDR elements for anchoring by slow bilateral stimulation
This approach of Trauma Aid takes into account the professional interests and needs of the helping professions such as social workers/psychologists and others in the refugee camps. Teaching includes trauma recognition, stabilization, effects of trauma on the family system, dealing with grief, gender-specific approaches and group interventions. A considerable part (> 50%) of the interventions is related to children and adolescents.
The basis for these considerations is a firm intention not to let this generation of children, which has experienced wars, become a lost generation. This requires good knowledge among the helpers about the effects of trauma and ways of relieving the burden on those affected.