ICDP at trauma conference in Antalya

Three Ukrainian psychologists, Maria Bingol, Viktoria Sidorenko and Larysa Konarska, attended a trauma conference in Antalya, Turkey, which took place 2-5^th of November 2023. The conference was the 5th Mediterranean Regional conference – Link to conference site: https://www.iagptraumadisasterconferenceantalya.org/  It was organized by the International Association for Group Psychotherapy and Group Processes (IAGP). The organizors received support from the Muratpaşa Antalya municipality.

The chair of the local organizing committee was Caner Bingol, founder of the Dr Ali Baboglu Jungian Psychodrama and Public Mental Health Institute. One of the aims of this institute is to implement ICDP and train others in the ICDP programme and for that purpose it has recently signed a partnership agreement with the ICDP international foundation.

The three psychologists first presented ICDP and afterwards conducted a workshop for participants from USA, Turkey and Ukraine. Read the report by Viktoria and Larysa.

“Many participants showed interest after our presentation, and we talked about ICDP with quite a few, including professionals from Italy, Australia, Georgia, Lebanon and Kurdistan. A psychotherapist couple seemed very interest to start using ICDP at their own therapy centre. It was a very good experience and exciting to present ICDP at this platform. Especially meaningful and touching was to present our ICDP work in the context of war trauma in Ukraine. This was not the first time that I presented the ICDP perspective in such a context. It is a painful topic since trauma in Ukraine is an ongoing daily feature of people’s lives. In our workshop we showed ways to work within this kind of context, when traumatic events are not stopping and therefore it is extremely difficult for people to find emotional stability. We demonstrated how ICDP creates a possibility for parents to receive support and find relief through the application of the emotional and mediational dialogues. This in fact has been my experience after working with children and adults from military families involved in the war in Ukraine. Karsten Hundeide’s “Essays on war traumas, adaptations and rehabilitation” has been amazingly helpful in our work in this area.“ – Maria Bingol.