Center for Therapy and Rehabilitation of Torture Victims

The Center for Therapy and Rehabilitation is open to people who have witnessed traumatic events which has worsened their life or caused them physical or emotional damage. What they need is a complex and long-lasting way of support for a large number of people who are not able find an adequate psychoemotional balance and carry on life difficulties.

Overall goals:
- To provide free of charge, effective and adequate psychotherapeutic treatment, psychosocial, social, medical and legal support to the victims of torture - those tortured during and after the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
- To stabilize and improve phsyoemotional state of our beneficiaries.

Activities

- Individual psychotherapy
- Group psychotherapy
- Individual body therapy
- Group body therapy
- Family therapy
- Partner therapy
- Individual social counseling
- Individual legal counseling
- Pedagogical work with children
- Pedagogical work with mothers
- Medical support

Reception Procedure
Rehabilitation services provided in the Centre: initial screening (evaluation) and diagnostics; individual and group psychotherapy; medical intervention; body therapy; occupational therapy in thein-patient department) social work; legal support.

Tretment

Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is done in groups or individually, depending on the problems and needs of beneficiaries. Different kinds of therapy techniques and approaches are used: Gestalt therapy, psychodrama, group psychoanalysis, systemic family therapy and body therapy (physical therapy).

Body Therapy (Physical Therapy)
Body therapy: the connection between a person and his/her body is very important. One's body carries one's life history, which is reflected through one's body language.

Medical Treatment
The focus of the medical treatment is on general medical diagnosis and therapy besides the treatment and monitoring of psychosomatic disorders.

Social Work and Support
This is done with groups or individually, depending on the goals and problems that the beneficiary has. With cooperation of the state institutions the social worker also provides support to the beneficiaries in the process of normalization of their social issues.

Legal support
By offering legal support, we help the beneficiaries get the status of the victims and support them in achieving their rights. This has a positive impact on their rehabilitation process.

"After Care" Program
The Vive Žene team continues to follow up on the position of the beneficiaries. That is to say that I we monitor what happens with the beneficiaries after the treatment, if the level of their psychoemotional stability is sustainable in the surroundings where they have returned or not. This part of the program we call "After Care". It is a very important aspect of our work.

A treatment is carried out based on the recovery plan, which is made by the team members working on the case. The recovery plan includes:
- Diagnosis
- Recovery plan: type of therapy, the number and the intensity of sessions and the timeline of recovery
- The expected results that are connected to the defined therapy goals
- The result indicators
- The ending of the therapy is agreed upon between the beneficiary the therapist.
During the therapy, changes of the treatment are possible. Every possibility is always analyzed by the team and the decisions about those changes agreed upon. A usual change in the treatment is the change of the modality, such as the change from permanent (in-patient) into a temporary (out-of-patient) treatment or vice versa. This is a very frequent change in as much that the beneficiaries reach their psycho-emotional stability during the in-patient treatment and return to place of residence while continuing with their treatment inside the Center, where they are provided with the out-of-patient treatment.