Dealing with psychotrauma in war against terror: East meets West through EMDR

The ‘War on Terror’ on the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan has committed almost two hundred thousand troops on either side with more than five million civilians directly affected by terrorist acts, bombings, blasts, drone attacks, and air strife. Children, women, and men of all ages report to health facilities in hundreds with psycho trauma ranging from acute stress reactions, posttraumatic stress disorders, dissociation, depression, anxiety and Medically Unexplained Symptoms (MUS). The health professionals with hardly any training in handling of psycho trauma are clueless about how to deal with these cases. A handful of mental health professionals trained by EMDR UK and EMDR Europe experts, through a humanitarian assistance programme are the only trained human resource currently available to deal with these massive numbers of survivors. A strategic placement of this grossly limited number of trained EMDR human resource ( four females, six males), in the war zone has helped scores of soldiers to return to the battlefield, hundreds of children to return to their schools, dozens of families to return to normality and many adults to return to work. The elementary yet devoted and dedicated EMDR services in the war torn regions of Swat, Wazirastan, Kohat and tertiary care services at Rawalpindi are a result of a timely collaboration between EMDR trainers from West providing training in EMDR to psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses and social workers of Pakistan; indeed a fine example of ‘Building Bridges between East & West through EMDR’.

Conference

English

Rana, M. (2010, July). Dealing with psychotrauma in war against terror: East meets West through EMDR. Symposium (Shamin Karim, Chair) conducted at the 1st EMDR Asia Conference, Bali, Indonesia