Event - Online workshop on responding to crises and traumatic events
An online workshop was held on the topic of responding to crises and traumatic events for interns working at Samutthana, a mental health resource centre based in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Samutthana is an organisation working to develop capacity building in mental health around Sri Lanka. Amongst many other activities, they have a three-month intern programme for Sri Lankan students with a background in psychology or social sciences who are hoping to expand their careers.
The session was hosted by Mr Husni Malik and the speaker was Professor Rachel Tribe (Trustee of Careif). The course content covered understanding what is meant by a crisis, trauma and vicarious trauma. It also covered the importance of considering cultural diversity and an understanding of explanatory health models and idioms of distress (the ways people may present their distress). The importance of support, supervision and working within your clinical competence and level of qualification was stressed.
Some feedback from the participants is given below:
"It was very interesting, especially with how interactive she was. I was looking forward to a follow-up session since this is one of the sectors I am interested in." - Minaya Athauda
“We learnt a lot” - H
"The session was a great introduction to trauma-informed care, especially because I am personally interested in vicarious trauma experiences. So looking forward for another session with her!” - Thrishala
