Healing a Violent World: Healing Invisible Wounds

War: a Mental State - Interview on ABCNews

Featured on the July 29, 2007 ABC World News segment about Iraqi refugees. Here I discuss the mental and social ramifications of Iraqi citizens' life in a war zone.

CLICK ON THE IMAGE AT RIGHT TO VIEW
(The video is hosted on ABCNews.com and includes advertisements before and after the interview segment)

Boston Globe Health and Science Article Today

An article/essay I wrote, "Trauma Care," is featured in The Boston Globe, Health and Science section today.

Pictured at right is the article, including a featured image of Svang Tor, Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma staff member, and former refugee. She holds her identification photo from her time in a Cambodian refugee camp.

From the article:

Trauma victims can transcend the most horrific events imaginable and go on to lead rich and meaningful lives. Ultimately, traumatized people heal themselves -- and what's more, their experience can teach the rest of us how to deal with the tragedies of everyday life.

You can find the article (for the next couple of days) here:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/articles/2007/07/02/trauma_care/

Declaration: A New Perspective on Healing a Violent World

I recently drafted this "manifesto" on healing a violent world. I invite visitors to this blog to comment on it, suggest additions/revisions, and share your own ideas about what such a declaration should include.

In one year, I will summarize comments and improvements to the declaration and re-post a final version based on your feedback.  There is a comment link at the bottom of this entry. Please share your thoughts here.

- Richard Mollica

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A New Perspective on Healing a Violent World

Seeing reality clearly, we observe that the world is awash in a sea of physical and mental suffering due to human cruelty. While at times this vision seems too much to bear, we do not give up our dream for a more loving and peaceful humanity. Seeing reality clearly means that in this new age of global communication the pain and suffering as well as the joys of each and every human person can be heard by every other human being without censorship or the control by political and social forces that in the past and present rationalize and falsify the extent of man’s cruelty to man. This new and original power of seeing gives us a technology of observing and changing the world comparable to that discovered by the Italian Renaissance discovery of perspective by Brunelleschi, Alberti and Piero della Francesca who moved us from the flat 2 dimensional images of the ancient and medieval world.

Seeing reality clearly, we can no longer accept a world with more than 40 nations in civil conflict and over 1 billion (i.e. 1/6 of our world citizens), harmed by mass violence. Torture is still widely accepted and is at epidemic proportions. Domestic violence, child abuse and culturally-sanctioned violence toward women, children and persons of different gender and racial orientations is a plague on our planet. The trafficking and sexploitation of women and small children including infants and pre-school-aged kids are becoming thriving multi-billion dollar industries. The commercial exploitation of youth and child labor and the economic oppression of the poor remains a financial pillar of many societies. The planet itself which gave birth to all life forms is selfishly destroyed.

Unafraid, we declare that uncontrolled human aggression and greed is a cancer upon our world body that must be cured. As medical practitioners we affirm that modern medicine not only has the right, but the moral obligation to address human cruelty and violence as the leading cause of illness and death. The shocking loud silence in our medical schools, health, and public health institutions and among our healing community is so loud it is deafening.

Unafraid, we affirm as healers of every type— community elders, religious and spiritual healers, traditional healers and shamans, holistic medical practitioners, medical and mental health practitioners, counselors, teachers, artists and all the human-oriented professions— that we can make a difference and reduce the pain of suffering from human cruelty.   

1. The goal of healing has always been primarily the relief of human suffering. The healer must embrace with ardour this primary principle and subordinate the now dominant ambitions of speed and the obsession with the power of machines and molecules.
2. We declare that the patient is a beautiful living organism that freely acts and loves in a family and a community and is not an isolated body part or a disembodied mind. The healer must have a relationship to the man, woman or child and their social and cultural context. Otherwise, human cruelty will continue to freely operate as a pathogen.
3. The healer will understand that humiliation is the major instrument of human violence that is systematically applied to others to annihilate the individual, their family and society. We must relinquish the myth that most violence is a random action perpetrated on an unsuspecting victim. Humiliation creates hopelessness, despair, anger, and revenge (often existing together) in the violated person. Humiliation must be acknowledged and its victim released from its tight grip.
4. Science has revealed that at the moment violence strikes, the biological, psychological, social and spiritual power of self-healing is activated. Today many healers and social agents set up barriers that dampen the self-healing response. The pathway to recovery is filled with the roadblocks of human design and creation. Modern day healers will do better to imitate their ancient Greek and Roman counterparts who followed the medical practice called "Vis Medicatrix Naturae," that is, "the path of natural healing." These early physicians intimately knew the life course of an illness and gave hope to the patient through their knowledge and support of the self-healing process.
5. We glorify the survivor of violence because of their heroic struggle to survive human violence, cruelty and degradation. We strongly combat anyone who barbarically blames the victims, or considers them guilty of criminal acts and subjects them to shame, social ostracism and even death--especially those poor women who have been sexually violated.
6. We glorify the healers who, at great sacrifice to themselves materially and emotionally, engage in the case of traumatized persons worldwide. Through their compassionate and courageous work they willingly suffer the pain of their patients as they engage in their therapeutic efforts. These healers in some situations risk their lives to help others, and in all cases accept upon themselves the victims’ pain as their pain. In many communities of the world, these are the unheralded giants of the medical community. They need and appreciate our support and we joyfully give it to them.
7. The trauma stories of the survivor and their healers need to be collected and archived for all to read without censorship. Since the beginning of our humanity, these stories present an evolving history of survival and healing, teaching all of us how to cope with the tragic events of everyday life. The failure to collect and archive these stories denies us the opportunity to prevent a future generation of violence.
8. Only through imagination can healing occur. Healing is the imagination to heal. The survivor and the therapist create within themselves the image of a whole and complete human being who has shed the pain and suffering of the illness state caused by human cruelty. We will sing of wellness, resiliency and a life full of love and friendship. We will sing of a world no longer tainted by human degradation and violent aggression.
9. Except in beauty there is no healing. Beauty is the salve and ointment that creates our healing space and healing relationships. Beauty is the pre-eminent healing medium that allows all physical, social-cultural, and spiritual forces to flow like the river Nile bringing all of the life- giving elements to the people of Ancient Egypt. But many humans want to destroy beauty because of envy and jealousy of its purity and innocence. Modern medicine wants to have with beauty a master-slave relationship. Realizing this, we will fight against all institutions and practices that are vulgar, ugly, sterile and demoralizing. On this point, science reveals that beauty is healing’s greatest ally.
10. At the start-up of this new century we are clear that the empathic circles formed by human beings need to be greatly expanded to include more of us. Everywhere we turn we find that the family which is supposed to be a zone of love and affection is filled with violence and child abuse. How can we consider all others as our brethren if we routinely harm our own family members? Worst of all, in most places, societies condone this behavior as normal. Family violence is not normal and is not acceptable. This failure at non-violent intimate relationships does not bode well for us holding back our aggression towards strangers outside our kinship groups. The fight against cruel degrading human behavior must begin with positive changes in the home!
11. We will call a social myth the popular belief that acts of social justice and social healing from violence can occur without concern for personal healing. The desire for justice is embedded within the hearts and minds of all victims of violence and this reality must be openly acknowledged and supported by society.

On our journey to the new ideal city, we will find at its end not the perfect environment of Piero della Francesca devoid of people, but one filled with human life. All of us can now see the dirty little secrets and ambitions of violent perpetrators who are actually few in number but use their money and power to harm the majority. We affirm that the world’s magnificence can be fully realized, sustained and protected from our human impulse to hurt and destroy all that is beautiful. 

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BBC Interview with Richard Mollica on Darfur Trauma

LISTEN TO THIS STORY

The World's Jessie Graham reports on a program here in the United States that helps immigrants from several African countries cope with their memories of war back home. We hear how some American therapists are trying to overcome the immigrants' reluctance to talk about their traumatic experiences.

The Innocence Project Exoneree Presentation

I promised to post the slides for the March 24 presentation/workshop/discussion with exonerees from wrongful convictions at the Innocence Project Conference at Harvard Law School. It was an honor to speak with you all and to hear your experiences.

Here is the presentation: Download innocence_project.ppt

Humiliating the Wounded Warrior - Walter Reed Op-Ed in Baltimore Sun

Op-Ed, The Baltimore Sun, Sunday, March 25, 2007
by Richard F. Mollica

No amount of money is going to fix the tragedy unfolding under public scrutiny at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Department of Veterans Affairs...Sadly, the ill treatment of injured soldiers is a tale with a long history. The public neglect of Vietnam veterans, for example, is well-known.

It is the genius of the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles that he described our current situation more than 2,000 years ago. In his play Philoctetes, he addresses the condition of every wounded hero: How can traumatized soldiers be made whole again, after terrible events place them in painful and unpredictable circumstances, and our society either ignores or abandons them?  More>

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Recovery from School Violence: Community Support Needed

A recent tragedy in Lincoln, MA illustrates the importance of community in the recovery from traumatic violence. My letter to the editor of the Lincoln Journal follows:

I want to express my deepest regrets for the tragic event at Lincoln-Sudbury High School (L-s) last Friday that will affect all of us — the two boys’ families, the L-S student body and teachers, the principal and his staff and the Lincoln and Sudbury communities — for a long time. In my work as a psychiatrist, I have dealt with the grief of inconceivable violent crimes over the past 25 years. Two things I have learned are the incredible resiliency and courage of victims to heal and the important need for communities to actively engage in recovery through altruism, spirituality and the normalization of life through the continuation of school and work.

Adolescents in our American communities regardless of race and social class are vulnerable to the complexities and dangers of a materialistic and violent world. I have worked with teens for more than two decades in the Boston area and elsewhere. I also have a junior at L-S and another child who will enter L-S next year. The ability of parents and teachers to provide kids with a safe and secure home and school environment is challenged by the constant barrage of aggressive cultural forces, many driven by the profit motive, such as violent media, pervasive drugs and alcohol, pressures toward sex and degradation of women. Fortunately, in the face of this marketing onslaught, the kids remain idealistic and full of life and vitality.

At this moment the L-S communities need to give our teens our full commitment, empathy and support. We also need to give Principal Ritchie and the administrators and teachers our compassion and positive energy. Often in communities affected by tragic violence the two poles of grief set in, either hopelessness and despair or revenge and anger. Ultimately neither results in recovery and healing at either the personal or social level. I stand firmly behind the principal and teachers at L-S and have no doubt they have done a great job of educating our kids and will continue to do so if we do not allow demoralization to set in at the school and among its students and staff. As community members and parents we must stand firmly behind our youth and their educators in the face of a terrible tragedy. These are our kids and teachers and we must love and support them in their time of need. This tragic moment calls for compassionate leadership and solidarity.