PTSD and healing. The extensive available literature regarding this type of trauma suggests that important advances in the diagnosis and treatment of PTSD have been made since 1980. Various modern therapies are considered useful for dealing with this condition: group counselling, hypnosis, transcendental meditation, eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (Xxxxxxx, 1989), pharmacotherapy, psychoanalysis, and cognitive behaviour modification. In order to achieve effective results in the treatment of PTSD two aspects have to be taken into account: first, the deconditioning of anxiety; and second, altering the way victims view themselves and their world by re-establishing the feeling of personal integrity and control (xxx xxx Xxxx et al., 1996: 420). Despite the major developments that have taken place in the psychiatric diagnosis and treatment of PTSD, there has also been recognition of various limitations that remain. First, many of the specific treatment techniques for victims of trauma remain intuitive and dependent on clinical wisdom (Xxxxxx et al., 1996). Second, trauma recovery is a complex process and there is no one available treatment technique for dealing effectively with all types of distressful posttraumatic reactions; and systematic investigation of what constitutes effective treatment is still in its infancy (van der Xxxx et al., 1996). Third, little is known about the after-effects of war trauma exposure in developing countries or of the potential use of the PTSD model to diagnose and to develop effective interventions there (Foa et al., 2000). Following the development of the internationalisation of the human rights discourse, the need for psychosocial healing of war survivors in developing countries has begun to receive increasing attention from humanitarian organizations, government 72 Further research into the health implications of PTSD demonstrated that PTSD is not limited to psychological symptoms. PTSD is associated with several ill health conditions: increased risk of depression, anxiety, and abuse of psychoactive substances potentially harmful for health (Xxxxxxx et al, 1995). Among adult survivors of childhood abuse, PTSD was closely associated to high rates of sexually transmitted diseases, severe obesity, ischemic heart disease, cancer, and liver disease among the general population in the United States (Felitti et al., 1998). As the process of diagnosing PTSD has expanded to include correlations with other mental and physical diseases, the s...
