South African Institue For Traumatic Stress
Room 122 Emthonjeni Centre, University of the Witwatersrand
Cr Jorrisen & Station Streets (Entrance from Station Street)
Braamfontein Johannesburg, 2001
Tel: (+27 11) 717 8677, Mobile: 084 2988 135, Fax: 086-6568-216
Leoni.Futter@wits.ac.za
Issue No.1 March 2004

IN THIS ISSUE

1. EDITORIAL

2. NEWS
International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies: What are the issue in the international trauma field.

3. WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THE TRAUMA FIELD IN SOUTH AFRICA
HIV/AIDS and Traumatic stress: Challenges for trauma practitioners and service providers

4. SAITS ACTIVITIES

  • Seminars
  • Training Courses
  • Graduation

5. ARTICLES


Volunteer Child Network Celebrates First Birthday Child Trauma Interventions In South Africa:
The State We're in

1. EDITORIAL

2003 has been an exciting and learning experience for SAITS. We trained 67 practitioners from over 25 organisations. The training offered more than content and skills. It also offered practitioners an opportunity to meet over a period of nine to ten months with other service providers. Our students learnt a lot form each other, established networks and connections that will continue beyond SATS. This kind of collaboration, learning and support amongst practitioners is exactly what SATS wants to harness.

We as SATS have also grown immensely form the experience. It also provided an opportunity to make us understand the kinds of cases and challenges faced by South African trauma practitioners. The honest feedback from our students has been invaluable in making us improve our courses this year. This year is even more exciting as we add new courses and improve on our previous courses. 2004 courses are starting in May and most of you will receive the invitations. If you have not received anything yet please contact us at www.saits.org.za

Also exciting for SAITS is this first issue of the "traumatic stress newsletter". This newsletter is aimed at providing you the trauma practitioner with information on what is happening in the international and national trauma field arena. It also aimed at providing you with information to enrich your knowledge and skill in dealing with traumatic stress. This means that you as the trauma practitioner are an integral part of this newsletter. If you have any articles or events related to traumatic stress and are important to trauma professionals please send them us so we can include them in the newsletter.

In this edition we have included two articles by specialist in the traumatic stress arena, on the news side we discuss Themba Lesizwe an organization that has become the major network and financial supporter for South African trauma service providers. We also bring highlights on issues that are important in SA trauma field. Finally we have feed from Craig Higson-Smith about the happenings in the international trauma arena through a summary of the issues that were raised in ISTSS International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies Annual Conference.

As this is our first issue on this quarterly newsletter your input and suggestions are very important. Please forward them to us at saits@saits.org.za

Wishing you a fruitful and fulfilling 2004. Nomfundo Mogapi Director-SAITS

NEWS

Feedback from the 19th Annual Congress of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies by Craig Higson-Smith (Craig Higson-Smith is a research psychologists who is the founder and board of director at SAITS)

The International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS) is the world's largest and most respected association of traumatic stress specialists. The society's most recent congress was held in Chicago in October 2003. While the audience was dominated by North Americans, a substantial number of South Americans, Europeans, Australasians and Africans were also present. The South African Institute for Traumatic Stress (SAITS) was represented at the meeting by Dr Merle Friedman and myself. The theme for the meeting was "Fragmentation and Integration in the Wake of Psychological Trauma". The conference included 25 pre-meeting institutes, six plenaries, over 300 papers, and hundreds of posters. A short article can only mention a few highlights selected on an entirely personal basis. Papers were organised according to ten conference tracks:

Assessment, diagnosis, psychometrics and research methods:

  • Biological and Medical Research
  • Children and Adolescents
  • Clinical and Intervention Research
  • Community Programs and Interventions
  • Culture, Diversity, Social Issues and Public Policy
  • Clinical Practice, Issues and Interventions
  • Disaster, Mass trauma, Prevention and Early Intervention
  • Media, Training and Education
  • Fragmentation and Integration
The opening plenary by Laura Prescott of Sister Witness International was based on the speaker's own experiences of childhood sexual abuse and insensitive treatment at the hands of people who were supposed to be helping. Although few would claim that her presentation contained any new information, this paper was a powerful reminder of the prevalence of child sexual abuse, and the need to protect the dignity and rights of survivors. Dr Cathy Widom's presentation on lifetime victimization statistics showed that survivors of early sexual abuse are more likely to be revictimized, and explored various probable causative pathways.

Another feature of the conference was the series of presentations by the Israeli team led by Dr Daniel Brom from the Israel Centre for the Treatment of Psychotrauma. The US-Israeli Bi-National Trauma Initiative focuses on post-terrorism recovery of individuals and communities. The presentations focussed on screening processes and interventions with children through pre-, primary and secondary schools, programmes on parenting as well as care for caregivers. Particularly impressive is training designed to assist parents to support their children using all modalities of existence including our beliefs, emotions, relationships, imagination, thoughts and physicality. Perhaps if this kind of work becomes available to all citizens of the Middle East, future generations will be able to build lasting peace in the region.

The key South African contribution to the conference was a plenary presentation entitled "Stories of Healing and Resilience: The Power of Culture and Community". In this presentation stories of resilience from South Africa, Namibia, Pakistan, South Korea, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo were told. Although some of these stories were wrenching all illustrated human beings' powerful capacities for resilience. Local music and rhythm were used to engage the large audience in a celebration of this resilience.

November 14-17, 2004 are the dates for the 20th Congress which will be held in New Orleans. It would be wonderful to see the work of other Southern African researchers and practitioners represented at this meeting. More information on ISTSS can be found at www.istss.org

2. WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THE TRAUMA FIELD IN SOUTH AFRICA

HIV/AIDS and Traumatic stress: Challenges for trauma practitioners and service providers by Nomfundo Mogapi (Nomfundo Mogapi is a clinical psychologist and he operational director of SAITS)

1. INTRODUCTION

South Africa has been warned about reaching an HIV/AIDS epidemic stage. Where large numbers of South Africans would be dying daily from the disease, millions of children left parentless and millions of South Africans living with the HIV virus. In the year 2003 one can say that the country has reached this stage.

South Africa woke up to the reality of AIDS a few years ago and in the last five years there has been aggressive campaigns to combat the problem. Most of the focus in the area of HIV and AIDS has been on preventing the spread of the virus. Large amounts of funds were poured into preventative programmes such as love life.

With HIV/AIDS reaching epidemic stages South Africa can longer focus only on prevention but treatment as well. The hospital and hospices beds full of HIV positive people, the number of people dying daily of AIDS, large numbers of families taking care of people who are dying and millions of HIV/AIDS orphans means that the country is not only faced with a prevention problem but a treatment one too.

Currently South Africa seems to have a narrow understanding on HIV