 PROJECTS
2000-2001
Helping the Helpers: Experiential Training for Georgian and South Ossetian Aid Workers
Funded by a second grant from the US Institute of Peace, this project's aim was to further develop CSMHI's methodology for training indigenous mental health professionals and other caretakers of ethnic trauma victims through clinical/psychopolitical workshops and training, both experiential and didactic.
October 2000 Trip
The CSMHI team for this trip consisted of Project Director Vamik Volkan, M.D. and Ali Gallagher, J.D., CSMHI Advisory Board member. Our FDHR partners had requested that we focus on violence against women during this visit, and Ms. Gallagher came prepared to give presentations in this area.
On October 10th our Georgian partners from FDHR held an international conference on "Domestic Violence", funded by a grant from Philip Morris. The program included presentations by Vamik Volkan and Ali Gallagher as well as our Georgian partners. The meeting was attended by 50 persons including FDHR members, journalists, staff from the Ombudsman's office, the government's chief of psychiatry, a representative from the Georgian National Security Council, and leaders from Georgian NGOs. Most importantly, in order to train South Ossetians as well as to continue the process of folk diplomacy between Georgians and South Ossetians, we invited several South Ossetians to participate in this one-day conference. The South Ossetians present were aware of the link between ethnic violence and violence against women, but it became clear that this link has not been carefully studied and in fact is sometimes denied.
On October 11th, Dr. Volkan and Ms. Gallagher faciliated a dialogue between the five South Ossetians and ten Georgian members of FDHR. The experiential training continued with the Georgian FDHR members in a workshop with CSMHI focusing on their observations of this dialogue.
The South Ossetian colleagues who came to Tbilisi reported on the very heartening results of the work that was done at the Tskhinvali Youth Palace (see below) up until last summer when FDHR had to suspend their visits. Because of the war in Chechnya and the number of refugees fleeing to Georgia- now up to 20,000- the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) directed FDHR to divert most of the funds previously allocated to South Ossetia to assist Chechen refugees. Thus since the beginning of summer 2000, FDHR psychologists and teachers have had to suspend their work with the Tskhinvali Youth Palace program. None of the 90 students who participated in the Youth Palace program have become involved in criminal activities such as teenage prostitution or drug use. The behavior of these 90 students was also compared to that of their peers from the same school who did not participate in the program. In a survey, only those students who participated in the Youth Palace program chose socially acceptable, hard working, committed, and honest people as their role models. Our follow-up work would necessarily include an analysis of these reported results as yet to be translated. If funds become available, FDHR and CSMHI would very much like to revive and continue this program. Not only were the results impressive, but it was the only Georgian-South Ossetian collaboration on this level.
After losing the collaboration on the Youth Palace project, FDHR has maintained contact with South Ossetians, but has shifted the focus from children to broader family issues.
Also on October 11th, Ali Gallagher gave another lecture on violence against women at Tbilisi State University. On October 16th, Vamik Volkan conducted a workshop at the University with 20 selected young psychologists, their professors, and three members of FDHR. The topic was interviewing techniques, specifically, how to interview IDPs and refugees in depth to gather information about their adjustment process. Some of the psychologists in attendance had been assigned to interview Meskhetians who were exiled from Georgia by Stalin 50 years ago and are now returning. The Georgian psychologists interviewing the newly returned Meskhetians have had difficulties and asked for training from CSMHI. Dr. Volkan gave specific, technical advice to help the psychologists conduct their interviews.
For the past three years, CSMHI has been interviewing and following the adjustment of an IDP family at Tbilisi Sea, a former resort located outside Tbilisi that has housed 3,000 Georgian IDPs from Abkhazia for the past eight years. The methodology is that the CSMHI team spends many hours with this family during each trip to Georgia, sometimes visiting them once, sometimes twice, with each encounter lasting several hours. We sit in their cramped apartment, formerly a hotel suite, and carry out interviews while observing their daily lives. We are accepted as participant observers. Several FDHR members accompany us and one of them has been the principal translator each time we have visited. FDHR colleagues have told us that this opportunity has been one of the most valuable aspects of our collaboration with them. In addition to providing training for FDHR, our work with this family, the Balanchivadze family, has also had an impact on them and on that whole community. The family's improvement over time has become a model for many of the Tbilisi Sea IDPs.
March 2001 Trip
The second and final trip of this project in the Republic of Georgia took place March 10-17, 2001. Traveling for CSMHI were Project Director Vamik D. Volkan, M.D. and CSMHI International Associate Isil Vahip. Dr. Vahip is a psychiatrist from Izmir, Turkey who spent a year as a fellow at CSMHI in Charlottesville. She is currently developing programs regarding women's rights in Turkey and is applying for funding to conduct a regional conference on this issue bringing together participants from Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Croatia.
Dr. Volkan conducted two workshops (each with presentation and discussion) for the Georgian psychologists/teachers/administration from the Foundation for the Development of Human Resources (FDHR) and the Georgian Center for Psychosocial and Medical Rehabilitation of Torture Victims. Both topics were requested by our Georgian partners as being most appropriate and urgent to their needs. The first workshop dealt with the Theory of Human Psychology, with emphasis on human responses to traumatic events to assist them with their work with traumatized individuals, torture victims and acute psychiatric conditions. The second workshop covered Techniques for Interviewing persons who have undergone trauma (such as refugees, IDPs and others). It focused particularly on how to bring out and understand the unspoken aspects of a person's reaction to trauma in order to help their healing and adaptation. Members of FDHR have observed CSMHI's ongoing interviews with one Georgian IDP family and the positive adjustments that have ensued. They asked for this workshop as part of their training in this area.
For more than 18 hours over two days in March 2001, CSMHI conducted intensive dialogue workshops in Tbilisi with four South Ossetians and seven Georgians. The South Ossetians were the same group who had come to Tbilisi in October 2000, but the dialogue was markedly different. This time, instead of restricting their presentation of the situation in Tskhinvali (South Ossetian capital) to a description of the horrible conditions in a small prison there, the South Ossetians gave full and open accounts of the various societal problems that exist since the war with Georgia. They spoke of the epidemic rise of child prostitution, drug abuse, criminality, and many other changes in social behavior amidst a catastrophic economic depression. The Georgians listened and frank discussion followed. The South Ossetians freely expressed how their ethnic identity is different from the Georgians', that they wish to be seen as different, that there needs to be a border (both physical and psychological) between them, but that they are willing to enter into cooperation and collaboration with the Georgians. While business dealings between South Ossetians and Georgia are currently illegal, the South Ossetians felt that humanitarian cooperation between the two groups should be possible and desirable. During our time together, they began to plan collaboration in dealing with individual and societal psychosocial problems in South Ossetia, arranging for telephone consultations during which the more experienced Georgians could offer help and advice to the South Ossetians.
These discussions were all the more remarkable because the current political climate is one of hands off regarding South Ossetian-Georgian relations. Official diplomatic efforts are effectively on hold (other issues such as Chechen refugees in Georgia as well as Georgian-Abkhazian conflicts and the proposed return of formerly exiled Meskhetians to Georgia are more acute) and even informal people-to-people dialogue and interaction activities between Georgians and South Ossetians are no longer happening. As we reported earlier, for our Georgian partners at FDHR, the funding from the Norwegian Refugee Council that had supported their collaboration with the South Ossetians has been diverted to FDHR's work with Chechen refugees in Georgia. We were pleased and very encouraged to see this group of South Ossetians and Georgians making informal plans to maintain contact and help each other by phone. In fact, the first such consultation took place in our presence a few days later, after the South Ossetians had returned home.
While the South Ossetian group was in Tbilisi, during the meeting with the Georgians, we took time out from the dialogue for a South Ossetian psychologist to present a case to Dr. Volkan. He offered his interpretation, advice, and suggestions, all in front of the other South Ossetians and Georgians. The session served as training by example for them all as well as specific assistance to the South Ossetian psychologist. The psychologist is professor of psychology at the University in Tskhinvali, but as there are no psychological clinics or institutions in South Ossetia, she has very little in the way of support or colleagues. As an individual, she receives phone calls from many, many persons who are suffering from the trauma of the war, and serves as a de facto telephone hot line on her own. Regular consultation and support from the Georgian psychologists of FDHR and CRT will surely make a difference.
During this trip, the team also visited the Georgian IDP family at Tbilisi Sea with whom they have spent significant time on each trip to Georgia. This time, they spent four hours interviewing Marli, her husband, and other family members. While just one FDHR member was present (and served as interpreter) for the interviews, CSMHI later presented and discussed these conversations with other FDHR members, interpreting the the elements of this family's gradual adjustment to their status as IDPs and the positive effect that their success is having on many other families in the same refugee complex. CSMHI asked FDHR members to continue visiting the family when CSMHI is not present, to encourage them, particularly Marli, the mother, to continue to be a model for other refugees (for more information go to One IDP family's story.)
Projects
Return to HOME PAGE |