Clinical Practice with Survivors of Torture and Political Violence

This course will explore clinical practice with immigrants and refugees who have experienced politically motivated violence, including war, torture, and genocide. The goal of torture and other forms of political violence is to disempower, isolate, and control. The goal of recovery, therefore, is to empower survivors to reclaim a sense of control and meaning in their lives. Rooted in complex trauma theory, students in this course will be introduced to clinical frameworks for addressing politically motivated violence, including holistic models of care, mind-body interventions, and ambiguous loss theory. The course will utilize case vignettes from clinical practice that will challenge students to expand traditional conceptualizations of the therapeutic frame in ways that account for culture, language and justice. Finally, the course will consider the socio-cultural-political backdrop that constructs conditions for clinical practice in order to discuss theories of continuous traumatic threat, as well as secondary trauma and sustainability for the clinical social worker.