Last year APPEH entered into a doubling partnership with TRC in Ramallah in the West Bank to support two therapists working with psychological trauma in the Palestinian population. Towards the end of 2014, TRC reported back to APPEH on their first six months of funding provided under the Doubling Agreement (May 1 – October 31 2014). It had been a busy time; psychological trauma among the Palestinian population has increased due to the constant threat of violence and attacks perpetrated by the Israeli government. Thousands of families had been affected by a campaign of arrests and re-arrests of recently released Palestinian prisoners. Due to the constant media coverage of Israel’s attack on Gaza, psychological trauma is not restricted to those who experienced the violence firsthand, but has spread to the West Bank. In response, TRC deployed specialised psychotherapy and crisis intervention treatments with the 421 clients treated between May and October 2014, 76% of whom were over 18 years of age, 153 were new clients. In all, 1729 therapy sessions were conducted.

APPEH funded two of these therapists, fulltime psychologists (and internationally certified narrative therapy trainers) Wael Dawabsha and Mohamad Absi. Wael conducted 252 sessions with 44 male clients; Mohamad saw 57 clients (43 male, 14 female) in 362 sessions.

TRC launched the first book on narrative therapy in Arabic during the reporting period. The book is currently being distributed by TRC in Arabic; an English version will be published soon. TRC is the only centre in Palestine and one of the few in the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa) to have a team of internationally certified narrative therapy experts who are regularly consulted by other partner centres in Palestine and throughout the region.

And in July 2014, TRC conducted a three-week psychosocial summer camp for direct and indirect child victims of the on-going conflict. Almost 300 victims of trauma, torture, those with family members killed, and children placed under administrative detention participated in sport, arts, theatre and music activities supplemented by group psychotherapy and narrative therapy in three camps in the West Bank.