WASHINGTON, November 30, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- On December 6th, 2010, James S. Gordon, M.D., one of world's leaders in healing psychological trauma, will bring an international team, including Palestinian, Israeli and Kosovar psychiatrists and psychologists to Haiti to lay the foundation for Haiti's first-ever nationwide program of primary mental healthcare.

Dr. Gordon has successfully brought population-wide psychological healing to Israel, Gaza, Kosovo and post-Katrina New Orleans and to US, military returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. His groundbreaking work in Gaza was the subject of a recent New York Times' piece (Sept. 8, 2010).

In Haiti, Dr. Gordon and his Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM) colleagues will train leaders from every major health and mental health organization in Haiti, including the Ministry of Health, the Medical and Nursing Schools, the General Hospital, Partners in Health, and Project Hope, as well as leaders of the Catholic, Protestant, and Voudoun communities and the Haitian National Police. These leaders will learn CMBM's scientifically validated model of mind-body medicine (including meditation, guided imagery, relaxation, biofeedback, and yoga), self expression in words, drawings and movement, and small group support. They, like the 3,500 other professionals whom CMBM has trained around the world, will also share their own trauma and grief, discover new psychological strengths and recover their capacity for joy.

The Initial Training will take place from December 6-10, 2010 at the Plaza Hotel in Port-au-Prince. Participants will bring what they have learned personally and professionally back to the communities they serve to create, for the first time ever in Haiti, a sustainable system of psychological self-care, and support.

The leadership of the Haitian medical and political communities now recognize that the massive death and physical damage from the earthquake, civil violence, and the more recent deaths and terror of the cholera epidemic have caused a population wide psychological devastation that will continue for many years. They are looking to Dr. Gordon and CMBM for a practical and enduring solution.

In postwar Kosovo, the CMBM model's effects were documented in the first ever randomized controlled trial of any intervention with war traumatized children, published in the prestigious Journal of Clinical Psychiatry in 2008. High school teachers there (supervised by local psychologists and psychiatrists), helped students achieve an 80% reduction in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. At a three month follow-up, these gains were largely maintained. Studies of children and adults in Gaza have demonstrated similar results at the seven month follow-up.

James S. Gordon M.D., a Harvard-educated psychiatrist, is the Founder and Director of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine, a Clinical Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Family Medicine at Georgetown Medical School, Dean of the Saybrook University College of Mind-Body Medicine, and former Chair (under Presidents Clinton and Bush) of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy. He is the author most recently of Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven Stage Journey Out Of Depression (Penguin 2008).

Said Archbishop Desmond Tutu on the work of Dr. Gordon and the Center, "You really are amazing and we give great thanks to God for the remarkable work you are doing in so many places where God's children are hurting".

Media coverage of the entire training--including filming of CMBM's emotionally powerful small groups and visually engaging large group movement and dance exercises--is welcome.

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SOURCE: Center for Mind-Body Medicine

CONTACT: Danette Wills, +1-917-474-4348 , danettewills@yahoo.com; orTerrie M. Williams, +1-212-316-0305, tmwms@terriewilliams.com