THE UST Graduate School’s Psychotrauma Clinic was tapped by the first district of Quezon City to help victims of violence against women and children recover from trauma.
Trained counselors from the first psychotrauma clinic in the country will begin offering free counseling and psychotherapeutic services on July to the 38 barangay units of the district under the Kanlungan para sa Kababaihan at Kabataan (KKK) program of district councilor Joseph Juico.
Some of the psychotherapeutic procedures that will be used are the “clinical incident stress debriefing,” a question-and-answer therapy, and “expressive art therapy,” in which children will make artworks to express their emotions and traumatic states.
Rodel Canlas, Psychotrauma Clinic counselor and volunteer to KKK, said that victims of abuse, especially children, should be treated to prevent them from becoming offenders in the future with their early exposure to violence.
“A child’s brain is very vulnerable and receptive,” Canlas said. “What they have seen and experienced in their early years may mold their brain and personality.”
The program also aims to extend legal and financial support, livelihood trainings, seminars, and microfinance aids to more than 81,000 families in the district.
Established in July 2002, the clinic is also the first in Asia to seek the establishment of “eye movement desensitization reprocessing,” a psychotherapy technique that uses eye movement as medium to cure patients with depression, phobias, anxieties and stress. John Constantine G. Cordon
