PSYCHOTHERAPY FOR ECONOMIC GROWTH

April 2020 Barranquilla – Colombia

Ten years ago, when we started this project we were certainly had the will to advocate for a change, we were hopeful but I guess we were not ready for such a huge success!!

Because of a sequence of armed conflicts, during 50 years women and children in Colombia took the worst part as victims of all kinds of violence, from slavery to domestic abuse, conditions described in this report from 2009. Women in Colombia apart from being dispossessed and displaced are usually deprived from education and tyrannized by a male chauvinist society.

For the past 10 years, our non-profit association has been involved in development activities, apart from fund raising to support micro-savings, we raise money to support psychological therapy for children and women affected by their problematic circ**stances.

It all started back in 2010 when I heard about EMDR therapy and the amazing results this
treatment brings about for patients suffering from posttraumatic shock syndrome. Therefore, I suggested the 3 psychologists who cooperate with our association to consider the possibility of employing this “tool” with the beneficiaries of our plan.

We decided to get in touch with EMDR-Humanitarian Assistance Programs (HAP), which is a global network of clinicians who travel around the world to treat the after-effects of
trauma resulting from natural disasters and also from violence. We told EMDR-HAP
that we wanted to implement this treatment to assist victims of domestic abuse
and they trained our professionals.

After 5-15 sessions of EMDR therapy 80% of the patients showed improvements on their behaviour, the recuperation of children was outstanding, some of them needed only 2
sessions to get cured!!.

The final balance of 10 years resulted in that we did not only offered these women economic opportunities. We empowered them by making available the appropriate therapeutic support for emotional healing.

A very interesting outcome we observed was that women who regained their long lost joyfulness soon became willing and able to enliven others who were in worse condition so that the wh*** group would recover self esteem and the sufficient strength to engage in any endeavour, this includes promoting a fundamental change within their environment: eradicating any sign of archaic maschilist customs or habits from their daily social interactions.

It’s important to highlight that this behavioural shift took place in a pacific yet determined fashion.

In general the Colombian society beneficiated of this constructive attitude as these people learned how to genuinely forgive and forget.

The association gathered the results of this experience in a report submitted to UNICEF, UNHRC, HCUNR and UNFPA entitled “EMDR Shock Therapy to Heal any Society”