Psychodrama, meet the refugees of Occupied Palestine

Participants in a training session in Jenin on March 18, 2012.

Whenever we find collaboration between cultures in conflict, we can take heart about the possibilities of peace. 

Kate Hudgins, Ph.D., TEP, a psychodramatist based in Charlottesville, Va., will be traveling to the Jenin Refugee Camp in Occupied Palestine in July to work with Ben Rivers, a Playback Theatre practitioner of The Freedom Theatre.

The Freedom Theatre, a theater and cultural center in Jenin Refugee Camp, is developing the only professional venue for theater and multimedia in the north of the West Bank in Occupied Palestine. Since it opened its doors in 2006, the organization continues to grow, develop and expand, enabling the young generation in the area to develop new and important skills to build a better future for themselves and their society.

The pair is putting together the Trauma Response Training Program, which will run for 18 months and teach helping professionals and others how to use psychodrama, particularly the Therapeutic Spiral Model developed by Dr. Hudgins. Participants include 15 social workers, psychologists, counselors and community workers from a variety of government and non-government organizations based in Jenin District. They will learn to use psychodrama and the Therapeutic Spiral Model, which modifies the use of psychodrama to maintain greater safety for survivors of trauma." Attendees will receive an International Certification in Trauma Healing from Therapeutic Spiral International upon completion of the program. 

For more information on the program, contact Ben Rivers; monetary donations for the project, which involves donated time, may be directed to Kate Hudgins.

Another new web site, this one from Kate Hudgins, TEP

Kate Hudgins, left, and Karen Carnabucci

Another web site of interest:

Kate Hudgins, Ph.D., TEP, has a beautiful new web site.

Kate is an internationally known psychodrama trainer as well as the developer of the Therapeutic Spiral Model, a treatment model that has adapted psychodrama with safety and containment measures especially for trauma survivors.

For the past 20 years she has  traveled across the United States and around the world to teach her model. Most recently she has been training mental health professionals in China for the past 10 years and continues work with her Chinese students on Skype.

Here in the Midwest, many still remember her when she offered workshops in Madison and Black Earth, Wis., for many years before moving to Charlottesville, Va. She is the author of Experiential Treatment For PTSD: The Therapeutic Spiral Model with a new book to be published shortly.

Kate describes the Therapeutic Spiral Model as "experiential psychotherapy" which has much standard psychology research showing it is equally as good as cognitive behavioral therapy for more problems and even more effective for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. She also refers to psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk and his writings on neurobiology and how psychodrama and the Therapeutic Spiral Model can change the brain because of its experiential base.

Her site offers numerous links on articles, research resources, books and more. Go visit.

Kate Hudgins speaks on innovative psychodrama and her trauma model

Kate Hudgins, the U.S. psychodramatist and psychologist who has developed an innovative model for treatment of trauma with psychodrama speaks about her most recent work at the international psychodrama conference in Portugal in October 2010, when she was keynote speaker.

Kate, who lived and worked in Wisconsin for several years, has demonstrated and taught her model in the United States and internationally, visiting some 30 countries through the years. For the past 10 years, she’s been teaching her action-oriented Therapeutic Spiral Model in universities in China. She is now back in her hometown of Charlottesville, Va., preparing for the upcoming publication of her fourth book, “Therapeutic Spiral Model on the Frontlines,” for which I’ve written a chapter with Kevin Fullin, M.D., on using the model with survivors and perpetrators of domestic violence. Her previous book, which I recommend to my trainees, is Experiential Treatment for PTSD: The Therapeutic Spiral Model.

Here’s the link to the first video, also shown below, when she talks about her model, how it can be adapted for children and moving moments with her work in China. The interview continues on this second link where she talks about hate, violence and compassion and her work with people who suffered in both sides of the conflict in Northern Ireland and with torture survivors from Bosnia.