The pervasiveness of traumatic events and the increasing awareness of their persistent and sometimes devastating effects on individuals and populations has repositioned trauma from a peripheral topic of interest for social workers to a mainstream subject of study. This article explores the personal and professional challenges that mass trauma presents to social workers and provides a rationale for, and description of, a proposed mindfulness-based trauma prevention program. This program is designed to guide social workers and other health professionals in learning effective self-directed techniques to maintain equanimity in the face of danger and human suffering, thereby reducing the incidence of secondary trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder. Components of the program include mindfulness of breathing, body scan, and trauma-releasing exercises.
This paper describes a five-stage approach toward conducting an ecologically based assessment with Indigenous youth populations, and the implications of this approach for the development and implementation of culturally grounded prevention interventions. A description of a pilot study funded by the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIH/NIDA) focused on drug use and American Indian youth is presented as one model for operationalizing ecologically based assessment with Indigenous youth populations, and issues related to translating the pilot study into a prevention intervention are discussed. This paper suggests that ecologically based assessment can serve as a foundation for culturally grounded prevention interventions, promoting the social and ecological validity of those interventions.
Background:Chronic stress has a negative effect on health-related quality of life. In challenging environments with multiple stressors, limited access to mental health resources, and cultural impediments to health care delivery, effective and accessible methods of stress management are critical. Activation of self-induced therapeutic tremors (SUTT) may mitigate excess stress and improve quality of life (QoL) under such conditions.Objectives:To investigate (1) the feasibility of a 10-week SUTT training and practice intervention and (2) the association between participants' use of SUTT and any changes in their self-reported health-related QoL.Methods:All staff members of the SOS Children's Village in Cape Town, South Africa (n=21) received 10 weeks of SUTT weekly training and group practice along with independent SUTT practice 2 to 3 times weekly. A wellness-based QoL questionnaire was administered before and after the intervention, and participants were instructed to keep a diary of their experiences.Results:Following 10 weeks of SUTT instruction and practice (1) there was a 91.3% adherence rate to the intervention protocol and (2) participants reported their overall impressions of changes in all five QoL domains increased at a statistically significant level: mean scores were 3.81 at pre-test and 4.35 at post-test (P<.05).Conclusions:A 10-week SUTT instruction and practice protocol is both highly feasible among non-professional caregivers and a potential therapeutic method for improving QoL.
Nel mondo moderno molte popolazioni intere sono soggette a traumi di origine sociale o naturale. Gli esseri umani sono lontani dallo sconfiggere la fame o il ricorso alla guerra. I traumi provocati su vasta scala da questi eventi determinano sui singoli le stesse conseguenze nella psiche e nel corpo che incontriamo in pazienti che nei momenti precoci della loro fase evolutiva sono stati traumatizzati. Č molto importante osservare cosa accade nel corpo e a quali meccanismi di difesa psicologica ci si aggrappa per sopravvivere.
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