Centering Families: Developing a whole-family services framework for trauma and torture-affected families and U.S survivors of torture programs

Many topics were discussed during the 2024 ORR Survivor of Torture Recipient Meeting, held in Washington, DC on March 20th, 2024. During this session, Mary Bunn, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois, Chicago presented on Centering Families: Developing a whole-family services framework for trauma and torture-affected families and U.S survivors of torture programs, two insightful presentations were delivered, each delving into unique programs designed to provide support for children of survivors.
 
Description: In this presentation, Dr. Mary Bunn reviewed the literature on the family system needs of torture-affected families and current evidence for family-based interventions. She discussed findings from a preliminary survey of family-based services among SOT programs and provided an overview of the Centering Families project goals, approach, and methodology. She also invited participant input into the project and discussed the implications of advancing a holistic framework that can more fully support the health, wellbeing, and successful adjustment of torture survivors and their families.
 
Biography of Presenter: Mary Bunn, PhD, LCSW is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, Department of Psychiatry. She is also a core faculty member and Co-Director of the Global Mental Health Research and Training Program in the UIC Center for Global Health and a clinical faculty member in the Mood and Anxiety Disorder Program where she provides therapy services to survivors of war, torture and forced migration.
 
Her research program focuses on community-based mental health prevention and care interventions for refugees and forced migrant communities across the migration continuum. This involves bridging prevention and intervention research to integrate a spectrum of services that are used for communities with diverse needs. She is particularly interested in peer service delivery models, therapeutic processes and how to best mobilize social and family resources through interventions to enhance coping and wellbeing. She integrates implementation science and human centered design methods in her research in order to enhance uptake and sustainability of evidence-based mental health services for refugee communities.
 
Dr. Bunn is currently a K01 career development awardee from the National Institute of Mental Health. She is principal investigator of a study to adapt an evidence-based multiple family group intervention for Arabic-speaking refugees for use by peer providers in community-based organizations. Dr. Bunn’s research program is informed by her extensive clinical and applied experience including seventeen years working with survivors of torture and political violence in the U.S and in post-conflict and humanitarian settings around the world.