It’s important to know that there is no normal or one way to react when you find out someone you care about has survived an act of sexual violence. Regardless of what you’re feeling, these emotions can be intense and difficult to deal with. Learning how to manage these feelings can help you support the survivor in your life and can help you feel less overwhelmed.
Understanding education as a form of both reconstruction and reparations is essential for societies in their efforts to address victims’ rights and help victims and their families overcome the consequences of a painful past.
When someone you care about suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), it can leave you feeling overwhelmed. The changes in your loved one can be worrying or even frightening. You may feel angry about what’s happening to your family and relationship, or hurt by your loved one’s distance and moodiness.
The Expert Workshop on “Redress and rehabilitation of child and adolescent victims of torture and the intergenerational transmission of trauma” highlighted methods that can be deployed to sustainably assist child and adolescent victims of torture, including techniques which can revive their self-confidence and sense of worth and restore their hope and dignity. I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to these tireless professionals, who are supported by the Torture Fund, for their lifechanging work.
Friends and family members of survivors of sexual violence often want to help a survivor through her or his experience but don’t know how. The resources below provide advice for friends and family about how to provide support without unintentionally increasing the stress that survivors experience, or otherwise doing harm. This 23-page guide contains a general overview of sexual violence. It includes some tips on communication, the common questions and concerns, the long-term effects and how significant others can be affected.
For mental health workers empathy is an essential aspect of good help. This is also a source for compassion fatigue, vicarious traumatization or secondary traumatic stress. Early recognition and awareness are crucial to be resilient to these symptoms. This page is also valid for family members and friends that give support to survivors.
Self-care is about taking steps to feel healthy and comfortable. Whether it happened recently or years ago, self-care can help you cope with the short- and long-term effects of a trauma like sexual assault. The information is available in Spanish here.
Here you can find a list of grounding exercises. Grounding exercises can help to handle dissociation or flashbacks, and reducing the symptoms of anxiety and panic. It is important to practice the exercises again and again until the skill becomes automatic and can be called on even during moments of distress. The aim of grounding is to take the survivor out of whatever traumatic moment she is remembering.
The effect of a disaster or traumatic event goes far beyond its immediate devastation. Just as it takes time to reconstruct damaged buildings, it takes time to grieve and rebuild our lives. What follows are examples of the types of emotional, behavioral, physical, and cognitive responses that are all common reactions to a disaster or other traumatic event.
Shock and denial are typical responses. Shock is a sudden and often intense disturbance of your emotional state that may leave you feeling stunned, numb or dazed. Denial involves your not acknowledging that something very stressful has happened, or not experiencing fully the intensity of the event. After shock subsides, reactions vary from one person to another (open the link for more information). There are a number of steps you can take to help restore emotional well-being and a sense of control following a disaster or other traumatic experience (open the link for more information).
It is normal to have strong reactions following a distressing or frightening event, but these should begin to reduce after a few weeks. People can experience a range of physical, mental, emotional and behavioural reactions.
Whatever the source, trauma leaves its imprint on the brain. For example, research studies consistently show that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is linked to greater activity in brain areas that process fear and less activation in parts of the prefrontal cortex. For the many who have survived human rights violations, the patterns of reactions will be the same.
Trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape, or natural disaster. Immediately after the event, shock and denial are typical. Longer term reactions include unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, strained relationships, and even physical symptoms like headaches or nausea.
Rape survivors in India face significant barriers to obtaining justice and critical support services, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Legal and other reforms adopted since the gang rape and murder of a student, Jyoti Singh Pandey, in Delhi in December 2012 have not been fully realized.
The thesis explores the concepts of truth and reparation and how they are interrelated. Lastly, it looks at the degree to which the victims’ rights to truth and reparation are protected in the Colombian legal framework, how they are implemented at the national level, and to what degree the protection of victims’ rights in Colombia meets international standards.
More than three decades have passed, but the goal of comprehensive reparations is still out of reach for the victims whose rights were seriously and systematically deprived by the Khmer Rouge. The issue of reparations has received little attention from the government and the international community, even after the establishment of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia for the Prosecution of Crimes Committed during the Period of Democratic Kampuchea.
Since independence Uganda has experienced different episodes of violent conflict and human rights abuses across successive political regimes. The most protracted and brutal of these conflicts was the two decade conflict in the northern Uganda between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the government forces, during which gross human rights violations and serious violations of international humanitarian law were perpetrated against individuals, families, and communities.
Been particularly aware of the importance of ensuring psychological support to survivors of rape and other forms of sexual violence, both immediately after the violence, if possible, and as part of a more long term reparation.
An important document called Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law affirms that states have the duty to investigate and, if there is sufficient evidence, the duty to submit to prosecution the person allegedly responsible for the violations and, if found guilty, the duty to punish her or him.
This webinar, from March, 2016 features Annie Sovcik and Marie Soueid from the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT), with Tim Kelly from the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and Faith Ray with the CVT National Capacity Building Program. This Measured Impact Webinar is part of a two-part training on the legal definitions of torture and how they apply to eligibility determinations for Survivors of Torture programs. This webinar concentrates on the legal frameworks of the U.S. and U.N. definitions of torture, as well as the refugee definition. It includes examples to illustrate cases that rise to the level of torture and cases that do not.
We often receive questions about using the “right” term or phrase. Here’s how we choose the language that we use.
The words “survivor” and “victim” have very different connotations. Being a “victim” implies helplessness and pity, which might not adequately describe the experiences of some people who experience sexual assault. Experiences vary from person to person, after all. However, what’s so different about the term “survivor” is that it implies that people are able to take control of their own lives. “Surviving” conveys that the person is still fighting, whether through the judicial system in order to bring justice to the perpetrator, to gain awareness for the cause, or to learn to live after experiencing an assault. A “survivor” thrives in their environment.
In the literature, the person who has experienced a severe human rights violation, is referred to as either “survivor” or as “victim”. Both terms are being used, but in some contexts one of them is usually preferred over the other. For example, advocacy and support organisations and groups – including HHRI – often use survivor. We consider survivor to be more empowering than the word victim, as it implies that the person is able to take some control in his or her life; that the person has resources and strength. In legal documents and in de judiciary the term victim is used.
Because of the abuse that survivors may have been exposed to, they may experience going through a difficult and painful time. Maybe they feel like the world seems different from how it used to be like? Maybe it is not quite the same as it was before? Maybe they find it is difficult to talk to family and friends about what happened, or maybe they do not want to talk about it to anyone? Maybe they find it difficult to be around other people?
After a disaster, children may experience anxiety, fear, sadness, sleep disruption, distressing dreams, irritability, difficulty concentrating, and anger outbursts. Learn the signs of children’s mental stress to help them cope after a disaster.
Emergencies and disasters can happen during the school day. Taking steps now can help protect the students in your care.
Very good manual (104 p.) with a description of symptoms that may occur in children after the disaster, identifying the severity of the disease, and suggestions on how to cope/treat. Detailed instructions, how-to-do step-by-step, can be used as a workshop manual. Target group: professionals/clinicians (teachers, families).
The Psychological First Aid Training Manual for Child Practitioners (PFA), aims to develop skills and competences of Save the Children staff, partners, and professionals in reducing the initial distress of children who have recently been exposed to a traumatic event.
This is the main page of NCTSN concerning Natural Disasters. It provides the most important links under this topic – earthquakes, epidemics, fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and tsunamis. Under each of these pages, you will find lots of very useful links and articles as well, with an essential description of situations, symptoms, and how-to-cope procedures.
This handbook (198 p.) presents very solid information and how-to-do about coping with disasters and their psychological effects. Focus on psychosocial support and how to organize: assessments, planning, implementation, training, and monitoring. Target group: psychosocial practitioners.
Factsheet (1 p.) ”what you can do right now to support wellbeing” – very practically how-to-do after a disaster had occurred, f.e. how to talk to survivors. Not only after Tsunamis.
his article is a “fact sheet” presenting to the target group of survivors an overview about symptoms, effects otherwise, and coping strategies.
This website under the American Psychological Association provides a good overview of the effects of disasters on people’s psyche. It gathers lots of relevant links under the topics of coping with disaster, how psychologists help, and some updated news about disaster.
This represents a short overview and consensus about best to cope with disasters, both practical topics and mentioning the necessary social support.
This section provides an overview of OCHA’s mandate, its leadership and how it is funded. It also includes a detailed section on OCHA’s flagship and thematic publications, and on the Agenda for Humanity – a plan put forward by the UN Secretary-General calling on global leaders to stand up for our common humanity and reduce humanitarian suffering.
New reports about COVID-19 are becoming more widespread and are making some people anxious. Here are some tips to help you manage your anxiety, put news reports in perspective and maintain a positive outlook. You can access the list of recommendations here.
Fear about the coronavirus has gripped the world. While nearly all cases have been in China, that has not stopped people in other countries from worrying. This new illness certainly is frightening and needs attention, but it’s important to note that far more people die from an illness that’s all too familiar — the seasonal flu. Why are we so afraid of this novel coronavirus when we are much more likely to catch the flu? Our guest, Baruch Fischhoff, PhD, is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and an expert on public perception of risk and human judgment and decision-making. He explains why we worry about new risks more than familiar ones, how to calm our anxiety and what are the psychological effects of being quarantined. Listen to the episode here.
Since we made the first and second edition of these guidelines, much has happened. A new update is needed. In several countries schools and kindergartens are now closed. Adults and children in these countries are taking a collective responsibility to ensure that the infection does not affect too many people at one time. This, so that our health care systems have the capacity to treat those who are most ill.
The CP AoR Help Desk is managing a dropbox folder with collected global, regional, and country-level resources for COVID-19, and this document will be a living document stored in the dropbox folder.