"An outstanding collection that brings an extraordinary international perspective to the growing literature on the treatment of the survivors of torture." -- New England Journal of Medicine
Since its beginnings in the 1970s, the field of torture rehabilitation has grown rapidly. A growing awareness about the practice of torture (more than 100 countries today practice government-sanctioned torture) and its effects on victims is leading to an increasing number of dedicated treatment centers. The health care professionals on the staffs of these centers need the best, most up-to-date information and advice they can get. This book delivers it. Caring for Victims of Torture contains all the collective wisdom of some of the most respected international experts in the treatment of victims of government torture -- all distinguished physicians -- including pioneers in the field of traumatic stress. Contributors discuss the most recent advances in knowledge about government-sanctioned torture and offer practical approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of torture victims. Organized into six main sections, this annotated volume provides an overview of the history and politics of torture and rehabilitation; guidance in identifying and defining the sequelae of torture; a framework for assessment and treatment; specific treatment interventions; and a discussion of ethical implications. In the final section, physicians working in the field offer firsthand accounts and address how they are trying to balance politics with caregiving. Focusing on the physician's role, this book is chiefly a clinical guide. But for advanced-level students, it serves as a thorough, up-to-date text and reference work. Religious leaders, lawyers, politicians, human rights advocates, and torture victims themselves will find it a valuable resource as well.
This 200-page book includes 100 inspiring stories from around the world that focus on HOW innovative practitioners are advancing human rights. Learn how:?Peace Brigades International protects endangered human rights activists using unarmed volunteer ?body guards?;?30 million people in Turkey were inspired to participate in a massive campaign against government corruption;?The Documentation Center of Cambodia promotes healing for genocide survivors by tracing the fates of disappeared loved ones; and?Nigdy Wiecej in Poland has created a network of volunteer correspondents to document incidents of neo-fascist violence around the country.In addition to these case studies, the book also includes an introduction to tactical and strategic thinking for human rights practitioners and a series of practical worksheets to help organizations determine which tactics and strategies will work best for them.
This book presents an extensive collection of high-yield case vignettes with recommendations for a comprehensive approach to cultural psychiatry. Culture is defined from an anthropological perspective, with an emphasis on aspects of culture beyond race, ethnicity, and other traditional demographic categories. The goal of this book is to offer clinical applications of cultural psychiatry via examination of special populations, systems, and settings. With ever-changing geopolitical environments, institutional structures, and sociodynamics, attention and consideration of context is paramount. Theoretical models and specific frameworks for evaluating cultural influence on the manifestation, development, and treatment response of mental health illnesses are presented. The chapters are organized to showcase different ways in which culture plays into everyday clinical practice. Emphasis is placed on the full sum of the care delivery transaction within a larger context, including public and community systems of care. Real-world case examples are discussed in each chapter to help contextualize the dynamic nature that culture plays in practice across inpatient and outpatient settings. Each case presents with relevant academic and historical background and practical operational advice for psychiatrists providing care within these respective communities. The authors address diverse clinical cases related to refugee and asylum seekers, military service members, survivors of human trafficking, incarcerated populations, and more. Training recommendations and best practices are outlined including psychopharmacology, psychosocial treatments, and cultural adaptations to evidence based treatments. Diversity in Action: Case Studies in Cultural Psychiatry is a useful resource for all psychiatrists, psychologists, general practitioners, social workers, nurses, administrators, public policy officials, and all medical professionals working with a culturally diverse subset of patients seeking mental health.
In 1997 the National Institute of Mental Health assembled a working group of international experts to address the mental health consequences of torture and related violence and trauma; report on the status of scientific knowledge; and include research recommendations with implications for treatment, services, and policy development. This book, dedicated to those who experience the horrors of torture and those who work to end it, is based on that report.
Women Unsilenced explores the impact of unthinkable violence committed against women and girls through multiple perspectives—women’s recall of life-threatening ordeals of torture, human trafficking, and organized crime, society’s failure to recognize and address such crimes, and close examinations of how justice, health, political, and social systems perpetuate revictimizing trauma. Written by retired public health nurses who include their own experiences helped give voice and understanding to women who have been silenced. This book discloses their “underground” caring work and offers “kitchen table” research and insights, using women’s storytelling on multiple platforms to educate readers on the unimaginable layers of perpetrators’ modus operandi of violence, manipulation, and deceit. At times raw, painful, and shocking, this book is an important resource for those who have survived such crimes; professionals who support those victimized by torturers and traffickers; police, legal professionals, criminologists, human rights activists, and educators alike. It reveals how healing and claiming one’s relationship with/to/for Self is possible.
Torture is an open secret in Chicago. Nobody in power wants to acknowledge this grim reality, but everyone knows it happens—and that the torturers are the police. Three to five new claims are submitted to the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission of Illinois each week. Four hundred cases are currently pending investigation. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander Jon Burge. As the more recent revelations from the Homan Square “black site” show, that brutal period is far from a historical anomaly. For more than fifty years, police officers who took an oath to protect and serve have instead beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and raped hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Chicago residents. In The Torture Letters, Laurence Ralph chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public’s complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad. Engaging with a long tradition of epistolary meditations on racism in the United States, from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, Ralph offers in this book a collection of open letters written to protesters, victims, students, and others. Through these moving, questing, enraged letters, Ralph bears witness to police violence that began in Burge’s Area Two and follows the city’s networks of torture to the global War on Terror. From Vietnam to Geneva to Guantanamo Bay—Ralph’s story extends as far as the legacy of American imperialism. Combining insights from fourteen years of research on torture with testimonies of victims of police violence, retired officers, lawyers, and protesters, this is a powerful indictment of police violence and a fierce challenge to all Americans to demand an end to the systems that support it. With compassion and careful skill, Ralph uncovers the tangled connections among law enforcement, the political machine, and the courts in Chicago, amplifying the voices of torture victims who are still with us—and lending a voice to those long deceased.