Bar-Ilan University and the humanitarian aid group IsraAID partnered have recently in order to provide crucial professional training to those who are treating victims of the Yazidi genocide.
Eighteen mental health workers arrived in Israel for an intensive two-week workshop teaching them how to treat the symptoms of complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) and other trauma.
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Over the past four years, Bar-Ilan University researchers Dr. Yaakov Hoffman, of the Interdisciplinary Department of Social Sciences, and Professor Ari Zivotofsky, of the Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, have conducted studies among Yazidi women held captive by Islamic State terrorist group.
They found that over 50% of them suffer from C-PTSD, while 23% suffer from standard post-traumatic stress disorder.
Though C-PTSD is a fundamentally different disorder than PTSD, they discovered that in best-case scenarios, the women have only been treated for PTSD.
The researchers say that administering PTSD intervention for C-PTSD is not only incorrect, but it may also be detrimental.
"We feel a moral obligation not only to study the effects of genocide but to share our know-how to assist those suffering from it," Dr. Hoffman said.
To this end, participants in the workshop received training on PTSD, C-PTSD, depression, suicide, insomnia, and more.
Seminars were conducted by American and Israeli experts, including Israel Hayom Opinion Editor Steve Ganot, who held a session for participants on the history of Israel and the Jewish people.
"We see efforts like this as our responsibility as a university to take our research, our knowledge, and our understanding one step forward in order to generate real, positive impact in the world," University President Professor Arie Zaban said.
The program was made possible through the generosity of Rachel Gindi and Alan and Barbara Gindi, the predominant funders, along with the Hitter Family Foundation and Alan Zekelman.
Workshop participants also visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, an Israeli Druze community, Jerusalem and its holy sites, and more.
Former Prisoner of Zion Natan Sharansky greeted the women and spoke about the late Russian nuclear physicist, dissident, Nobel laureate, and human rights activist Andrei Sakharov.
Sharansky was a close aide and friend of Sakharov and was particularly interested in meeting workshop participant Lamiya Aji Bashar, a former Islamic State captive who today is a human rights activist.
Lamiya Aji Bashar won the 2016 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought with Yazidi human rights advocate Nadia Murad. Murad's family was killed in the genocide, but she managed to flee.
