Tag Archive for: Rwandan Genocide

The TFT Foundation is excited to announce the publication of its 2009 PTSD study and work in Rwanda.  It has taken a long time and a lot of effort by many, and led by our board member, and Trauma Relief Committee chair, Suzanne Connolly.

It was a long time coming but, I think, an important article in a well read journal by those interested in helping Africa recover from trauma.  I would also like to thank the Peter C. Alderman Foundation for their assistance in edit corrections.

The entire study can be found on page 24 of the June 2013 Issue of the African Journal of Traumatic Stress, found here: http://petercaldermanfoundation.org/AfricanJnl/AJTS_V1N5.pdf

I wish to thank all the members of the TFT Community, The Paton Family Trust, The PepsiCo Foundation and the Ruth Lane Foundation for their support to complete this work.

The abstract is below.

 

Abstract

The use of Thought Field Therapy (TFT), a brief therapy technique, is examined in a study titled, Utilizing Community Resources to Treat PTSD: A Random Controlled Study Using Thought Field Therapy, to determine if there is a significant difference in the reduction of trauma symptoms between the treated group and the untreated group post treatment.

Study participants in the waitlist group received treatment after having completing the posttest.  One-hundred and sixty four adult survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide received a one-time trauma-focused TFT intervention in this randomized waitlist controlled study. Prior to the study,TFT techniques were taught to community leaders, who then provided them in their native language, Kinyarwanda, to the participants during an individual session. Pre- and post-intervention surveys of trauma symptoms included the Trauma Symptom Inventory (TSI)

(Briere, 1995) and the Modified Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Scale (MPSS) (Falsetti, Resnick, Resnick, & Kilpatrick, 1993). After one week, significant differences were found in trauma symptoms and level of PTSD symptom severity and frequency between the treatment and the waitlist control groups. Participants in the waitlist group experienced significant reductions in trauma symptoms following their treatments,which took place after the first posttest.  These positive outcomes suggest that a one-time, community leader facilitated trauma-focused intervention may be beneficial with protracted PTSD in genocide survivors.

Caroline Sakai, PhD., a psychologist and TFT practitioner, based in Hawaii, headed a team of therapists who worked with children in an orphanage in Kigali, Rwanda. The children survived the Rwandan genocide in 1994, in which 800,000 to 1 million people were slaughtered during the course of 100 days. Dr Sakai was interviewed by Michiko Ishikawa for Share International.

Share International: How did you come to work with the genocide survivors in Rwanda?

Caroline Sakai: The idea came up when I was in New Orleans as part of an ATFT Foundation Trauma Relief Team working with Hurricane Katrina survivors and first responders – doctors, nurses and security people who were working with the survivors. One of the team members, Paul Oas, a psychotherapist and minister, asked me if I could work with the genocide survivors of Rwanda. His church has been helping to support the El Shaddai orphanage in Kigali, Rwanda, by providing necessities like food and shelter. He was seeing the effects of the genocide trauma among the children in terms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) – nightmares, flashbacks, insomnia, bedwetting, depression, withdrawal and rage. Reverend Oas wanted to take a TFT team there and work with the genocide survivors. Since I had headed the clinical team in New Orleans, he asked if I could do that in Rwanda.

The complete TFT treatment for trauma would be essentially following up with what else comes up for the client after successfully processing through the targeted trauma.

Targeting any residual body sensations often brings up further information to process through, more perturbations. This would be continued until no more perturbations can be found, and client now thinks about the trauma or phobia with clearly changed perspectives, affect, thoughts, intensity, vividness, body sensations, perceptions in all sensory modalities, etc.

Using the Peak Performance protocol to enhance and improve confidence in coping effectively in dealing with the problem is an important component that parallels the future template. The usual instructions for the client to call if there are any recurrence of symptoms would also be in effect, as well as follow-up session(s) to work on residuals or other material that emerges subsequently in awake or dream states.

SI: What is unique about your method of working with trauma?

CS: Thought Field Therapy is the most rapidly effective, and most gentle, treatment of trauma I have come across. Read more

Haiti Earthquake trauma

While it is much too soon to begin to think about helping with the psychological traumas of the survivors in the after effect of the massive earthquake in Haiti, it is important to begin the psychological healing of the families and friends who are living elsewhere, and providing trauma relief for the rescue crews, first responders, troops going in to serve and their families. Even the press and viewers are being effected by the constant stream of heart wrenching images and reports of losses.

The ATFT Foundation has provided Thought Field Therapy® (TFT), the original meridian tapping therapy for trauma, to victims of wars, genocides and natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina and the floods in Tabasco, Mexico.

TFT has been safely used to heal psychological problems for 30 years, and PTSD studies have demonstrated it to be highly effective in quickly eliminating the debilitating effects of even the worst of traumas with lasting results.

Early and regular use of these safe, self-applied protocols, can reduce or eliminate crippling grief, secondary traumatization, compassion fatigue and burn-out of our rescue workers and first responders. TFT can also reduce the stress and fears burdening the families of the rescue workers and response teams on the ground.

To this end, the ATFT Foundation’s TFT Trauma Relief Blog teaches these TFT trauma relief procedures in English, Japanese, Chinese, German, Russian, Spanish, French and Italian. These procedures are the very same, powerful tools used successfully in Kosovo with war victims, Rwandan genocide survivors, New Orleans Hurricane Katrina victims, and other traumatized regions.

The TFT Trauma Relief blog also has 34 powerful stories about how TFT has relieved the trauma of war, suicide, genocide, kidnapping, prison, massive burns, rape, etc. Our most recent story is Juanita Van Ham’s account of how TFT transformed her experience after being severely traumatized in a bank robbery.

The tapping techniques are provided in print and video formats, to all who are in need.

Please, if you have any family or friends that have been affected by the devastating earthquake in Haiti, or have loved ones deployed in the rescue efforts, take advantage of these free, powerful self-help tools.

Go to www.TFTTraumaRelief.wordpress.com .

You can also receive a Free Stress Relief Guide, at www.RogerCallahan.com.

Our prayers are with Haiti.

Creative Commons License photo credit: markyturner