Social Health Care for Healing Syrian Refugees

The next six months will be full with growth and activity for SHC staff and students. We will soon have our first graduate student interns in Jordan (students from Germany and the U.S.). The interns are highly experienced and will be involved in research, professional training of SHC students and volunteers in Jordan, aiding in the distribution of the 5,000 therapeutic bears that have been donated to SHC for Syrian refugee children, and providing counseling/support services to the refugee community. Our pilot clinic and other support programs continue to grow.

The bears will be shipped to Aqaba in early May. SHC will then ship them to Amman and Irbid for storage and distribution to refugee children. The teddy bears have been shown to be an effective tool in self soothing, stress management, and trauma treatment of children in other war torn areas of the world. SHC will be distributing the bears through our many NGO partners and SHC sites to the children and design research in the helpfulness of the bears as a tool in working with traumatized children. 

In April, SHC staff from Lebanon and Jordan will be coming to the U.S., sponsored by Michigan State University, to present on refugee mental health at the annual Islamic Mental Health and Psychotherapy conference. They have been invited to present on the refugee situation and share some of the creative programs they are doing. We are hoping to do one or two public events while they are here for the general public to learn about the realities of the mass displacement and what is needed.

Ongoing training , both virtually and on the ground, continues for our students and volunteers working with the refugee community in Jordan. We recently completed our second training manual that will be translated into Arabic. The first was in crisis intervention training. The new manual is in group facilitation of support groups, conflict resolution, and psychological first aid groups. In May two adjunct training staff will be in Jordan for two weeks of training for students, volunteers, medical students, and our NGO partners. The trainings will be in Internal Family Systems work, Family Therapy, and Burn out Prevention.