The GIST-T Project

MISSION

Our professional staff seeks to increase awareness of both causes and consequences of stress and trauma on individuals and communities. We strive to improve the availability of, and access to, empirically validated trauma treatment worldwide. Our approach is two-sided:

• We want to reach unreached traumatized populations by strengthening care capacity of local para- and allied professionals working in humanitarian settings in the Global South.

• We also focus on at-risk professional personnel dealing with violent conflicts and natural disasters.

AIM

To reduce the global burden of stress and trauma by making effective care more accessible in underserved communities. In doing so, we aim to promote healing, improve health outcomes, and inspire lasting hope.

Our vision is to foster individual and collective resilience, contribute to peacebuilding, and unlock human productivity and potential around the world.

GOALS

• Raise awareness about the social, economic, and mental health consequences of trauma
• Support conventional and innovative trauma training (including for volunteers and paraprofessionals)
• Expand availability of trauma services in development, humanitarian, and protection settings
• Scale up use of trauma care services
• Promote research into trauma care methods that integrate with formal systems
• Mobilize resources to make GIST-T sustainable and impactful

Impact

The contribution large-scale trauma healing could make to enhance social, economic and cultural productivity, as well as individual educability, creativity and well-being, could well be historic.

Effective trauma treatment could help break the causal chains of violence begetting violence, abuse begetting more abuse, transmitted from generation to generation. It could bring an end to immense and insidious inner suffering, suffering that is largely unnecessary.

The GIST-T project intends to help expand current efforts to scale up trauma treatment. To this end it uses several approaches, but its principal means is our recently developed Traumatic Stress Relief (TSR) programme – GIST-T’s flagship innovation.

Training

The TSR programme, currently in its pilot phase in several countries aims to substantially reduce the trauma treatment gap and make effective, safe, earliest-possible TS relief available primarily for humanitarian settings in LMICs (low- and middle-income countries). Its focus is on frontline workers to be selected as para- and allied professionals, and to be capacitated to deliver simple trauma relief treatments to traumatized ‘people of concern’ and to their peers.

With extensive expertise and unwavering dedication, we consistently deliver favorable resolutions, ensuring our clients’ satisfaction with our legal services.

Our legal team is committed to achieving the best possible results in every case.

Locations

Pilot countries include:
🇦🇫 Afghanistan
🇦🇴 Angola
🇧🇦 Bosnia
🇧🇷 Brazil
🇧🇫 Burkina Faso
🇨🇩 DR Congo
🇮🇶 Iraq
🇯🇴 Jordan
🇷🇼 Rwanda
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia
🇿🇦 South Africa
🇸🇸 South Sudan
🇺🇬 Uganda
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
🇺🇦 Ukraine
🇺🇸 United States

Why frontline workers?

They deal with situations caused by violent conflicts and natural disasters. They are already on the ground, close to where and when trauma occurs. They themselves are frequently exposed to traumatic events and circumstances. So, increasing their own resilience and attending to their trauma symptoms will support their ongoing capacity to perform their challenging duties.

By creating a local capacity for them to offer simple, but effective, trauma treatments, this allows them to add a meaningful service to other traumatized people that goes beyond Psychological First Aid – a kind of Psychological Second Aid – at an early opportunity following a traumatizing exposure.

Practical opportunities present themselves daily. The GIST-T project is set up to seize many of these opportunities, and to create new ones. This poses a challenge to all of us.

Meet the team

The Board

The Board makes all decisions concerning GIST-T activities and finances. All members offer their services pro bono.

Legal Status

The Global Initiative for Stress and Trauma Treatment (GIST-T) is an incorporated association in Switzerland (Statutes of Association). It is in the process of incorporating in France, Netherlands and United Kingdom.

GIST-T Technical Advisory Group (TAG)

From 2016 to 2019, the TAG supported GIST-T’s early growth with quarterly meetings, expert advice and encouragement. Their contribution remains deeply appreciated.

TSR Technical Advisory Group

During the first four years of start-up (2016-2019), GIST-T was very lucky to have advice and support from many members of the TAG which met quarterly. Their experience and encouragement were, and still are, much appreciated. This group is for cutting-edge mental health experts engaged in design, promotion, training, development or research regarding work related to traumatic stress relief and PTSD treatment. They are pioneers in shifting this paradigm.

Femke Bannink | Esly Carvalho | Sushma Mehrotra | Ron Ockwell | Ian Barron | Derek Farrell | Mark Nickerson | Elan Shapiro

TSR Technical Advisory Group

In Memory of Dr Francine Shapiro

GIST-T was established with the support and encouragement of Dr Francine Shapiro, American psychologist, originator and developer of EMDR, who passed away on 16 June 2019.

Francine was a demanding researcher, a didactic trainer, a skilful speaker and writer, an intrepid discoverer and pioneer of EMDR, and a big-hearted humanitarian and great visionary.

Her commitment to healing humanity’s traumas has been an inspiration to those involved with GIST-T and many others worldwide.