Mobilizing to empower and restore: dance/movement therapy with children affected by war and organized violence

David Alan Harris

doi:10.17918/etd-2649

This literature-based study engages a revisioning of dance/movement therapy ascommunity-based practice, capable-through a program emphasizing restoration andempowerment-of responding effectively to the needs of children affected by war andorganized violence. Half of the world's 35 million refugees are children, and most comefrom the developing world. For these children, experiences of uprooting, displacement, poverty, and repression exacerbate those of exposure to the extreme stressors of armed conflict. A risk factor vs. protective factor analysis of stress and resilience is applied toward assessing the multiple dimensions of children's vulnerability and strength in the face of atrocity and deprivation. Given a preponderance of evidence to support adifferential association between exposure to stressors in such contexts and subsequentemotional or psychological disturbance, investigations of factors conducive toadaptational outcomes are highlighted, as these may provide foundation for preventiveinterventions. Issues of cultural difference between children from the developing world andtherapists from the developed are explored, and such constructs as "trauma" discussedwith reference to the ethnocultural relevance of posttraumatic stress disorder and itsalternatives. Ethnographic studies of the construction of identity in holistic, collective-or "sociocentric"-cultures are introduced, and complemented with insights from psychological investigators and therapists from the developing world. The theory that rituals hold transformative potential for societies disrupted by the forces of armed conflict is advanced, and shown relevant to therapeutic objectives among war-affected populations for whom the restoration of sociality may be a principal need. Interventions that integrate Western intrapsychic and "traditional" techniques are deemed especially germane to dance/movement therapy, given the modality's predication on an integral connectedness of mind and body. A sample "traditional dance"-based program for a resilient group of war-affected, resettled refugee youth from the Southern Sudanillustrates a re-imagining of such integrative psychotherapeutic intervention. This project, informed by an understanding that social reintegration is pivotal to mental health in sociocentric groups, recasts the dance/movement therapist as a community organizer focused on empowering as well as restoring. An Inventory of Psychosocial-Cultural Interaction is provided as a tool for the development of culturally relevant interventions with such groups.

Mobilizing to empower and restore: dance/movement therapy with children affected by war and organized violence

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Mobilizing to empower and restore: dance/movement therapy with children affected by war and organized violence

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