Cases Without Borders-For Gaza Psychologist, Hope Amid Despair

Mods, this is really about mental health issues in Gaza, but if you feel it should be moved, please put it where you think it fits.

The article will be in the NY Times tomorrow. It is written by James S. Gordon, M,D, a psychiatrist, who is the founder and director of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington and the author of “Unstuck"

From the article:

In 2007, we surveyed 500 children. Fully 70 percent said they had witnessed a killing — by Israelis or in factional fighting. Almost 30 percent had post-traumatic disorder: agitation, inability to concentrate or sleep, violent outbursts, nightmares of traumatic events and flashbacks of them during the day, withdrawal from ordinary activities and emotional numbing.

Still, Jamil, Waleed and the other 90 professionals we trained felt happier and more hopeful as they used the techniques that our international faculty taught them: slow deep breathing to quiet anxiety; guided imagery to seek intuitive solutions to intractable problems; words, drawings and movement to express and share their feelings.

Our Gaza clinicians soon began to share what was helping them in hundreds of small groups that they created for thousands of traumatized children and adults. On my recent visits, they introduced me to mothers who, learning in our groups to relax, were able to successfully breast-feed babies who had been failing to thrive; to a teenage boy whose group leader had taught him mental images that gave him alternatives to suicidal rock throwing at Israeli tanks.

snip

“When the bombs fall,” Jamil tells me, “my children and I breathe deeply, and then we share our feelings. We have each other — our families and our Mind-Body team, too — and of course we have to trust in God.” And then his voice rises, and he is asking about my family and planning for the time when we will return to Gaza, to train 150 more clinicians. “We will need them so much more,” he says.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/health/views/13case.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=james%20gordon&st=cse