Mass trauma events, such as natural disasters, war and torture, affect millions of people every year. Currently, there is no mental health care model with the potential to address the psychological needs of survivors in a cost-effective way. This book presents such a model, along with guidance on its implementation, making it invaluable for both policy-makers and mental health professionals. Building on more than twenty years of extensive research with mass trauma survivors, the authors present a model of traumatic stress to aid understanding of mass trauma and how its psychological impact can be overcome with control-focused behavioral treatment. This text offers a critical review of various controversial issues in the field of psychological trauma in light of recent research findings. Including two structured manuals on earthquake trauma, covering treatment delivery and self-help, the book will be of use to survivors themselves as well as care providers.

Despite numerous international declarations and conventions prohibiting human rights violations, torture remains a major problem in many countries of the world. This book reveals in some detail the medical, psychiatric and psychological problems confronting the survivors of torture, and reviews the various and sometimes conflicting treatment approaches available to those involved in their care. Contributions are drawn both from host countries treating refugees who have experienced torture and from countries where treatment and rehabilitation of torture survivors has taken place in a setting of continuing repression and victimization. This handbook has become a classic resource, providing theoretical and practical information which addresses the needs of all health workers helping survivors of torture. Its reviews of issues in the sociology and psychobiology of organized violence also serve to command the interest of a much wider readership.

This book presents an interdisciplinary approach to definition of torture by bringing together behavioral science and international law perspectives on torture. It is a collaborative effort by a group of prominent scholars of behavioral sciences, international law, human rights, and public health with internationally recognized expertise and authority in their field. It represents a first ever attempt to explore the scientific basis of legal understanding of torture and inform international law on various definitional issues by proposing a sound theory- and empirical-evidence-based psychological formulation of torture. Drawing on scientific evidence from the editor's 30 years of systematic research on torture, it proposes a learning theory formulation of torture based on the concept of helplessness under the control of others and offers an assessment methodology that can reduce the element of subjectivity in legal judgments in individual cases. It also demonstrates how this formulation can help understand the nature and severity of ill-treatments in different contexts, such as domestic violence and adverse conditions of penal confinement. Through a learning theory analysis of "enhanced interrogation techniques," it demonstrates not only why these techniques constitute torture but also how they help us understand the contextual defining characteristic of torture in general. The proposed formulation implies a broader concept of torture than previously understood, provides scientific and moral justification for the evolving trends in international law towards a broader coverage of ill-treatments in contexts beyond official custody and points to new directions of expansion of the concept. With a focus on the concepts of shame and humiliation and their evolutionary origin, the book explains why inhuman or degrading treatments can cause as much pain or suffering as physical torture. Although treatment issues are not covered, the book sheds light on potentially effective treatment approaches by offering important insights into psychology of torture.