Survivors of Torture Grand Rounds: Neuroscience of Stress and Resiliency

Description:
Significant practice gaps exist for the Survivors of Torture (SOT) treatment programs and their clinicians caring for torture survivors. SOT clinicians do not have familiarity with the neuroscience of stress and resiliency in the diagnosis and treatment of torture survivors and their family members. Understanding how the brain and body are impacted by stress leading to acute emotional and behavioral problems and chronic disease is crucial in patients who have experienced extreme violence and torture. Learning how to evaluate and implement a stress and resiliency analysis in the clinical care of torture survivors is crucial to maximizing the therapeutic impact on the patient.
 
Untreated chronic stress can lead to serious behavioral health problems as well as lead to life threatening stress related illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes and stroke. Additionally, SOT clinicians need to have a better understanding of the neuroscience of the intergenerational impact of extreme violence on the children of survivors and how to diagnosis and treat this intergenerational transmission.
 
Learning Objectives:
Upon completion of the activity, participants will be able to:

• Discuss the Mind Body Stress to Resilience Ratio and how it evolved
• Describe the relationship of this ratio to the Hormetic Bell-Shaped Curve
• Explain the importance of this relationship for our understanding of resilience and its importance for health promotion and illness prevention.
• Describe a Scalar Argument to support the hypothesis that mind body medicine is best understood in the context of a nested hierarchy of a continuum of networks; each level essentially replicates a self-similar scaled version of the levels adjacent to it.
• Explain why the medical mission can benefit from this understanding.

Target Audience:
Staff of torture rehabilitation programs that are funded by the Office of Refugee Resettlement and/or are members of the National Consortium of Torture Treatment Program as well as SASIC and STAR Program staff and other providers serving survivors of torture and trauma. This session is designed for providers working across disciplines, such as: Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Fellows, Residents, Social Workers and Nurses.