ARQ National Psychotrauma Centre

This article argues in favor of introducing chaplaincy care at asylum centers and develops three arguments for doing so. First, chaplaincy is one way to protect the right to health of refugees and to improve their spiritual well-being. The positive contribution of chaplaincy services to mental health care is increasingly recognized, especially in the domain of PTSD. Second, chaplaincy services support asylum seekers in exercising their freedom of religion while entrusted to state care.

The articles included in this Research Topic provide essential insights in clinical, cultural, and epidemiological aspects of grief disorders. Clinical aspects include diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of grief disorders. Cultural aspects involve the provision of care within specific cultural contexts, while dealing with multiculturalism and globalization. Epidemiological aspects encompass both clinical and cultural aspects and include risk for the development or maintenance of disordered grief as well as factors that contribute to resilience and recovery. 

To treat the impact of trauma, most current evidence supports the use of trauma-focused psychotherapy as the first line approach. However, millions of individuals exposed to trauma worldwide seek Complementary and Integrative Health (CIH) therapies in hopes of achieving
wellness above and beyond reducing symptoms. But what is the evidence for CIH interventions? What are potential pitfalls? Given the growing popularity of and strong interest in CIH, EJPT is featuring research on these approaches in this special issue.

Background: Adolescence is a period marked by important physical and social changes, which often leads to an increase of body dissatisfaction. Recent studies have shown an association between interoception and body dissatisfaction in female adolescents. One variable that may contribute to the association between interoceptive awareness and body dissatisfaction is intolerance of uncertainty (IU). This study aims to investigate multiple facets of interoceptive awareness, IU, and their relations with body dissatisfaction in adolescent girls.

While spouses of military veterans have not been directly exposed to threats during deployment, they often experience a substantial post-deployment-related health burden while living with and caring for a partner with deployment-related mental health issues. Drawing from in-depth interviews, this study examined how female spouses of military veterans deal with the psychosocial effects of deployment. We show how these women cope. They keep their family lives going by maintaining hope for the future.

Introduction: Throughout history, Jewish communities have been exposed to collectively experienced traumatic events. Little is known about the role that the community plays in the impact of these traumatic events on Jewish diaspora people. This scoping review aims to map the concepts of the resilience of Jewish communities in the diaspora and to identify factors that influence this resilience.

Background: Timely and effective interventions can alleviate or prevent the development of clinical symptomatology in trauma-exposed individuals. However, due to limited access to these interventions, and/or stigma around accessing mental health services, there is an unmet need. Internet-and mobile-based interventions may help to address this need.

Background and objectives: A rise in prolonged grief disorder (PGD) levels was expected due to COVID-19 deaths. We tested this assumption, by comparing PGD-severity among people who experienced a death of a loved one during the pandemic caused by a natural (e.g., illness), COVID-19, or unnatural (e.g., accidents, suicides, homicides) loss on average 8 months earlier and in a subgroup of people bereaved ≥12 months earlier.

Background and objectives: Savoring beliefs refer to people’s beliefs about their ability to generate, increase, and prolong enjoyment from positive experiences. The role of these beliefs in affecting responses to negative events is largely unexplored. This study aimed to increase
knowledge about the role of savoring beliefs in symptoms of posttraumatic stress (PTS) following negative life events and the incremental role of these beliefs beyond the impact of worry, depressive rumination, and neuroticism.

This study provided a detailed description of the experiences of 60 treatment-seeking children and young people following parental intimate partner homicide (PIPH) in the United Kingdom, and evaluated the potential effectiveness of the traumatic grief focused cognitive behavioral therapy they received.