Healing and Human Rights: A Blog by the Center for Victims of Torture
Showing all blog posts in Mental Health and Psychosocial Support
Marie Soueid, CVT legal fellow in the Washington, D.C. office, comments on recent event featuring photographic documentation of torture in Syria.
Curt Goering, CVT executive director, recalls the devastation in Bosnia twenty years ago, and notes the progress that has been made for healing and rebuilding.
A brief look back at the founding of the Center for Victims of Torture.
In honor of National Children's Mental Health Awareness Day, we’re sharing this article that was originally published in our Storycloth newsletter in November 2014.
Increasingly, our staff in Jordan is seeing children and young people who need mental health and physical therapy care to cope with their traumatic experiences. Now, more than a third of our clients in Jordan are under the age of 18. To help heal these young survivors, the counseling and physical therapy staff developed ten-week joint physical therapy/counseling groups that provide age-appropriate activities.
Many may not be ready to tell their story in front of a truth commission or international tribunal—some may never be ready. They may not even be ready to tell their story confidentially to a clinician to begin the process of healing. But if and when they are ready, the choice should be their own. The international community, governments and non-governmental organizations alike, should be there to offer support and expertise. The truth that must emerge must be the survivor’s own.
CVT Research Associate, Jennifer Esala, Ph.D, answers key questions on monitoring and evaluation and how it supports program development.
When I think of International Women’s Day, I think of the women we see every day here at the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT) in our treatment programs in the U.S., Jordan, Kenya, Ethiopia, and soon, Uganda. Around the world, the numbers of refugees and displaced people are growing, and many of the women we serve at CVT are refugees.
This coming Sunday, March 8, is International Women’s Day – a day to mark the global economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future. This year’s theme – Make It Happen – is particularly fitting for one of our partners in the Partners in Trauma Healing (PATH) project -- Vive Žene.
“Your help to me is mandatory because if you do not help me I will die.” Those were the first words from Oba, a young Congolese man who joined one of our counseling groups.
For survivors, their bodies often become perceived as the enemy because of the pain. By reducing the pain, we’re helping people become more comfortable in their bodies again. We also know that as pain levels go down, emotions become more positive which promotes better relationships and more meaningful lives.
