Project "Psychological-educational workshop for activists of the Association for missing persons"

Association “ Amica Educa“ in cooperation with and financial support of International Committee of Red Cross, implemented the project “Psycho-educational workshop for the activists of Association for Missing People“ in the period September - December of 2001.

Participants of this seminar were active members of several associations that worked with the families whose members were declared missing during the war in B&H.

The goal of this seminar was to provide the participants with psycho-educational support with purpose of personal disembarrassment, in order to make their further work with the families of missing persons easier.

6 lectures and workshops were organized during this project. Work with participatns were divided into two blocks: 
At the beginning, participants were introduced with the Burn-Out (phenomenon of professional burnout) and PTSD ( posttraumatic stress disorder).
Participants showed a big interest in these two topics, and they recognized their own symptoms, and they made concrete questions.
The workshops also included relaxation part where participants experienced the exercises for the relaxation of body, breathing exercises, leading fantasies, and then participants were given the opportunity to express their own feelings, thoughts and emotions through creative way of expressing (various methods of “art therapy“).
During the painting, participants expressed their traumatic experience although the previously led fantasy wasn't aimed at the direct connection to that traumatic experience, which points to the presence of intrusive symptoms as well as the symptoms of recurrent experiences for the majority of participants.
During the next workshop, participants were given presentation on the trauma. Tests among the participants were made using the questionnaire for trauma (IES) and questionnaire for depression (BDY).
The results of these tests showed the presence of PTSD for majority of participants.
As far as depressive symptoms are concerned, only one person had a strong form of depression, while others just had a depression in range from weak to mild form, and two people didn't have any form of depression symptoms, which definitely depends on the mental structure of the person, difficulty of traumatic experience, mechanism of defensive system and the current family situation as well as the social-economical situation of the person.

In the second block of the seminar, on the suggestion of participants, lectures were given on the topic “PTSD and children“. In the continuation of the seminar, symptoms of Burnout were repeated, and tests among present participants were made. CF TEST questionnaire from ACE with key has been carried out. The results pointed to very high risk of empathy exposure, which can be explained with common traumatic experiences of the people who work with the families of missing persons, therefore there is risk of appearance of soon burnout at work for majority of participants.
During the relaxation, participators were introduced with clay modeling method and they enjoyed, especially in ripping and throwing peaces of clay) which allowed them to set themselves free of the accumulated aggressive energy.

In the final part of the seminar, there was the interest expressed by the participants to form the Self-help Group, so respecting their interests, they were introduced with the group psychotherapy, rules of the group as well as group phenomena. 

As a measure of Burn Out prevention, the leaders of this seminar suggested: