5 October 2010

Dundee help for West Bank's trauma-hit children

A University of Dundee academic will return to the West Bank next week to continue voluntary work helping children there to deal with high levels of trauma and stress arising from the troubled region’s history of conflict.

Dr Ian Barron, of the School of Education and Social Work at Dundee, is taking a range of training programmes to school counsellors in Nablus, a twin city of Dundee.

'The population in Nablus and across the West Bank is one that has suffered a great deal of trauma and there are clear signs of the effect that has had on hundreds of children,' said Dr Barron.

'School counsellors working over there are dealing with a child population that shows very high levels of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, arising from the terrible things that many young people have had to live with as the results of conflict in the region.

'We see children living with high levels of anxiety and suffering 'flashbacks' to traumatic events. These are issues which can lead to mental health problems as they get older and with such high levels of incidence of these issues across the population it is a very serious problem.

'The key concern raised with us by the Palestinians is a lack of hope for the future among young people there.'

Dr Barron first went to Nablus last year to support the work started by the Centre for Applied Research in Education (CARE) in Ramallah, to train school counsellors to identify, assess and treat the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

One year on that work is showing positive results in helping young people cope with their problems. 'The school counsellors have been working with around 200 children and the results have been very encouraging,' said Dr Barron.

'What we are doing now is expanding the range of training for those counsellors, specifically in the area of violence prevention and trauma recovery training, working once again with the Centre for Applied Research in Ramallah. Kieran Docherty, a specialist counsellor, will be delivering his 'Listening skills for crisis intervention' programme.

'Eight school counsellors who were previously trained in the Teaching Recovery Techniques programme have been selected and will now be trained in delivering the Listening skills for crisis intervention programme. This small group of trained school counsellors will then train other school counsellors in the listening skills programme across the West Bank.'

Dr Barron will also take to the West Bank another programme developed in Dundee, the `Violence Is Preventable’ programme developed by local charity Eighteen And Under which has been converted into Braille and is to be delivered in a school for the blind in Bethlehem.

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