In a blog post today on the Psychology Today website, Dr. D.J. Moran, author of ACT in Practice, writes of a recent trip to war-torn Sierra Leone with two other psychologists. Together, they taught two workshops on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to local mental health practitioners. Dr. Moran writes:
In January 2011, my colleagues Beate Ebert and JoAnne Dahl and I set out to present two workshops in evidence-based behavior therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Beate is a dedicated psychologist and the founder of Commit + Act, the non-governmental agency that planned this trip. JoAnne has extensive understanding of using ACT with the chronic pain population, but also has experience with bringing ACT to populations that have limited access to mental health care. Our first five (5) day workshop was in Freetown, S.L. and the second three (3) day workshop was in Serabu, S.L.. Each workshop had over 30 mental health practitioners in attendance. They were very eager to hear how they could address Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder with behavior therapy and ACT.
Dr. Moran offers a touching sketch of their efforts to bring an evidence-based mindfulness and acceptance-based treatment to therapists in a country that has witnessed unimaginable horror. I can't do it justice to through summary; to read the full post, click here.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Thanks for this post and link to the full article. As a psychologist and ex aid workers I have applied mindfulness in Palestine and in post-earthquake China as a valid alternative to post-disaster counselling and CISD, which are unfortunately still the preferred form of mental health interventions of many aid agencies.
ReplyDeleteI would like to connect with practitioners who work in this field, and share a published article on my experience of using mindfulness in the Palestinian Territories.
That's great to hear, Alessandra, I've written about the ineffectiveness of CISD for another blog, so I'm glad to hear you've been exploring alternatives. For anyone interested in my CISD post, you can check it out here: http://www.psychotherapybrownbag.com/psychotherapy_brown_bag_a/2010/09/critical-incident-stress-debriefing-ineffective-treatment-or-part-of-a-well-balanced-breakfast.html
ReplyDelete