A Ball State University professor's approach to therapy is helping African refugees cope with the trauma of civil war.
Assistant professor of psychology Lucinda Woodward said she and Ball State alumnus, Matthew Decker, will return to a refugee camp in Ghana with a group of students to continue the work they conducted there last summer.
Woodward said she traveled to Ghana in July where she spent five months screening and counseling residents of the Buduburam Liberian Refugee Settlement.
The camp, which Woodward said occupied "a huge chunk of land, bigger than campus," houses several thousand Liberian citizens who fled their country when civil war erupted in 1989.
According to the United Nations' Web site, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees established the camp in 1990. Fighting in Liberia ended in 1996, but a second civil war began in 1999.
Liberia ended its most recent civil war in 2003, Woodward said. Since then, the UN has ceased administering Buduburam. Basic medical care is unavailable to a large portion of the refugee population, she said.
"I know people with breast cancer [and] intestinal cancer," Woodward said. "I know a man who is paralyzed because he has a bullet in his spine. I know someone who has a burned esophagus. These people don't have access to treatment."
In addition to medical care, Woodward said, items such as toothpaste, soap, books and clothing were in short supply. Volunteerism and fundraising are crucial. The need for goods and medical care supercede group therapy and treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, she said.
"If you don't have the basics, it's really hard to think about mental health," Woodward said.
According to Amnesty International's Web site, Ghana's military groups frequently recruit children younger than 18.
Woodward said she met several child soldiers who "volunteered" for military service, choosing to fight in an attempt to save their families from acts of torture or continued abuse, she said.
"Because of the acts of unbelievable violence they were forced to commit, often against their own families and communities," many child soldiers are "ostracized from society," Woodward said. As a result of the traumatic events in which these children have participated, she said, many suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Interested in treating large groups of refugees quickly and efficiently, Woodward said, she adopted the concept of "rap sessions," or informal group therapy sessions used by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Psychologists in the camp developed a protocol for group therapy in order to measure refugees' progress, she said.
"The best [course of treatment] by far," Woodward said, "was the combination of individual and structured group therapies. It was incredible, remarkable, the progress made in just ten weeks."
She said refugees who received dual therapies built trust and resorted less to physical confrontation.
About 250 child soldiers and refugees received therapy, Woodward said.
Decker said his and Woodward's treatment of PTSD "is a drop in the bucket compared to what the need is."
"Now that we know [group therapy] works, we can expand it to a larger group of people," he said. "Expanding this to beyond the refugee camps would probably be the next step."
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