When HPRT was founded in December of 1981, the terms and the underlying concept of human rights and refugees did not exist in American medicine. International donors considered refugee mental health to be an unnecessary luxury; it was generally believed that little could be done to restore torture survivors to normal lives.

Attitudes and values have dramatically changed as to the importance of healing the physical, psychological and spiritual suffering of sufferers of extreme violence. HPRT has been at the forefront of this global effort along with many of HPRT's colleagues throughout the world.

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Philosophy

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The Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma has spent 40 years caring for the health and mental needs of survivors of mass violence and torture through a combined practice of clinical experience and medical research. To bring the advances of modern medical science to those members of our society who in spite of their great suffering have little access to care.

Methodology

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While events of human violence may occur on just a single day, their impact on survivors and their families and can last a lifetime. The complex multiple effects of extreme violence on human beings demand equally complex methods for discovery and treatment. Observing and caring for the scars of torture on a survivor's body requires different skills than appreciating the inner suffering of a survivor of sexual violence. Some effects of violence are deeply personal and individualized; others seem to be almost universal.

Bosnia Reconstruction

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HPRT has been training primary care physicians, mental health clinicians, and members of the clergy in the former Yugoslavia since 1995. HPRT has trained over 200 practitioners in Bosnia and Croatia in caring for survivors of mass violence, through a model that is being replicated throughout Bosnia and has been accepted by the region's Stability Pact. Our work in Bosnia has been supported by the World Bank, the Open Society Institute, and USAID.

Torture Survivors

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HPRT is currently under a grant from the Office of Refugee Resettlement to provide community-based clinical care for torture survivors residing in Massachusetts. HPRT clinicians are currently working on-site at community health centers and mutual assistance agencies, and with asylum attorneys, screening and evaluating patients, providing consultation/liaison to primary care providers, and offering Health Promotion classes in Khmer.

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