Mental Health

Alternative Therapies Required to Treat Migration Trauma

By Kanika Gupta | Update Date: Dec 04, 2015 03:36 PM EST

The latest migrant crisis in Europe has led to the advancement of new psychological therapies that transcend the existing methods of helping victims who have faced multiple traumas such as war, rape, and torture. The thousands of people that are currently fleeing from Syria, Afghanistan and any other war-torn areas are likely to have high degree of psychiatric conditions that also includes the very complex PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), said a recent study in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Someone suffering from PTSD is plagued with visions of the past with panic attacks that can make them emotionally unstable, sleepless and also unable to settle into a new life, reports Reuters.

Mainstream methods that are designed to treat victims of a single trauma in much less complex settings such as car accident survivors or soldiers returning from a war, will not be able to handle the problem of mental health crisis that is faced by the current day migrants, say specialists. The therapists in Europe are preparing themselves for this new type of psychological disorder that is likely to be faced by the refugees that are moving to Europe in hordes after facing high level of torture and trauma in their war-torn countries. The new treatments will be focused on psychological techniques that include Narrative Exposure Therapy and Intercultural Psychotherapy, as reported by Reuters.

Aurelia Barbieri, Italian Psychotherapist, is one of the few volunteers in mental health specialization who wants to hone her skills to help during the Europe migrant crisis. She is currently working with Medecins Sans Frontieres, a charity makeshift arrival camp in Sicily and helping the migrants with the "Psychological First Aid", as she calls it, after making a successful escape from the desert, through Libya and then across the sea. "They often say they have been imprisoned, beaten all day long, shot at, or scalded with boiling water. They've been treated like beasts," she said in a telephone interview, according to Reuters

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