Children forced to witness the killing of their parents. Women deported to Russia or raped in front of loved ones. Abandoned elderly. Wounded faces in which fear can be read. Common graves. The images that come from the war in Ukraine are not forgotten. They strike those who look at them from afar, but trace indelible lines in the minds of the victims. Families who until recently lived lives similar to ours and who now face horror. They get used to precarious conditions and defy death at home or flee, abandoning everything.
A trauma that they will carry with them for who knows how long, but that can be cured, mitigated. Roger Solomon does this for a living. Fix fragile, broken hearts and minds with the care of a craftsman. Help people involved in natural disasters, attacks or conflicts to manage pain and post traumatic stress. With her words, he indicates a path to learn to live with nightmares. And these days he is on the latest emergency, the Ukrainian one. From her computer he coordinates a group of Ukrainian psychologists and teaches them what to do.
Professor Solomon, how are you working with Ukraine?
“We are trying to teach Ukrainians resilience, the ability to face and overcome a traumatic event or a difficult period. Those who are at war every day and suffer violence face enormous trauma. The Ukrainian population faces what they face. we psychiatrists define post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Nature has given us tools to cope with the situation and we have to use them to the fullest. I work online with many Ukrainian psychiatrists and psychologists and do training. I try to provide them with guidance. more useful for managing patients. There is a way to go “.
What kind of therapy can be useful?
“There are people who have seen relatives die or have suffered violence. Among the techniques that work the most, there is the Emdr (ndr. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), a type of psychotherapeutic therapeutic approach used to treat traumatic and stressful events. It is widely used after natural disasters or accidents. This approach was studied by Francine Shapiro between 1987 and 1990 and is currently a standardized tool empirically supported by numerous studies “.
You are in Italy on the occasion of the release of your book Mourning and Emdr. From diagnosis to clinical intervention (Raffaello Cortina ed.). How does the Emdr work?
“Bilateral brain stimulation is used to desensitize the memory and change the patient’s beliefs about the event. This allows you to perceive the memory with more detachment, to feel the emotions less intensely, with less disturbing physical sensations and to finally modify , negative beliefs about oneself. The role of the therapist is to make the patient re-elaborate the event, guiding him in the alternating eye movement or with a right / left tactile stimulation. It is necessary to use caution and not intervene directly on the person, to do not interrupt processing “.
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In your opinion, will the Ukrainian people be able to look forward?
“Man can survive evil, injustice, violence. Ukrainians are resilient. They know how to respond to adversity with strength and flexibility. I am very impressed by their attitude. They are strong, but we cannot hide what is happening today. it will have a strong impact on the next generations of Ukrainians. We have also seen it with the victims of the Holocaust, during the Second World War and on the people who have been tortured. “
Can we give a definition to the word trauma?
“It is something that makes us feel vulnerable. We no longer control anything, we are fragile. We all have a breaking point where we feel weak and feel that we cannot defend ourselves from evil.”
You have worked with the victims of 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing, but also with those of Hurricane Katrina. How do you intervene immediately?
“People were in shock, as Ukrainians are today. In the case of 9/11, I worked with relatives of the victims. It was a completely unexpected event and therefore the shock was profound. The first thing to do is to intervene with first aid. The person is made to understand that they are now safe. If needed, food and clothing are provided. Then they try to calm them and make them feel the support of the community. In some cases, drugs are needed. In Ukraine, for example. For example, the psychologists told me that we could help the victims by making them understand that they are not alone. Therefore, we try to connect with them and talk to them if they want to. We help them find a balance, to feel ‘safe’ , we teach them skills that can protect them. We work on emotions. Sometimes people shut themselves up in silence. In those cases, we respect their times, but we try to communicate to them that they are not alone “.
How will children in Ukraine who have witnessed this violence grow up? And what about kids who suffer from trauma?
“When trauma occurs in childhood we define it as complex, it involves the child’s self-esteem and the ability to manage emotions. It can be a child who has been abused, witnessed violence or has been neglected. . Here too there are therapies that work well. Sometimes the person does not remember the abuse or the traumatic event. We try to bring back the memory of the fact, but without forcing it. In the case of death it is not always easy, because children do not understand death. Here too we try to protect and give safety to the patient, and then proceed with the EMDR “.
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Among the risks after a trauma, is there that the patient dissociates?
“In these cases we speak of dissociative personality disorder, a serious mental disorder. It is a psychological state characterized by alterations of identities. It manifests itself as a dissociative amnesia with gaps in memory in the past and memory lapses in the present. The patient is not able to remember not only the traumatic and stressful events of the past but above all the daily events and important personal information, such as his name, which would not normally be forgotten “.
How to manage anger, for example in bereavement management?
“In the case of bereavement, anger is triggered because we feel alone and we miss the person. We are afraid of living without them. The Emdr can help bring out important emotions, especially the best memories with a loved one. it transforms and a new ‘connection’ is created with our loved one. They are long processes. We cannot give precise times, it takes a long time, especially if the person we lose has had a violent death “.
First Covid, now the war, they brought another epidemic, the mental one. Depressions increase. Because?
“It is a phenomenon that has also involved many young people who feel increasingly fragile. They are unable to see the future. But we adults too, are frightened by the economic crisis, social problems, diseases, isolation brought about by the pandemic and from the war. Suddenly we realized that the world is not as safe as we thought. “
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