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Helping traumatized disaster victims; Rhianna-Brown brouhaha; Maine's new DV bills

IsraAID has been helping Japan's tsunami victims by providing training to handle post-traumatic stress disorder, according to this very touching story by Boaz Arad on JTA.org. IsraAID organizes art, music, movement and drama therapy sessions as a mostly nonverbal method  to help people express their feelings.

And, in Haiti, a team from the Center for Mind-Body Medicine is training 120 health care workers to use CMBM’s mind-body techniques to help Haitians still suffering post-traumatic stress disorder from the 2010 earthquake. It's the second time that the Washington, D.C.-based organization has done a training session in Haiti.

In case you haven't heard about the Rhianna-Chris Brown brouhaha....he brutally attacked her in 2009, and the music superstars just released a duet. The best analysis I've seen is this by Ta-Nehisi Coates in the Atlantic. He reprinted the police report, which is stark in its detail, then offers this astute observation:

We can't force people to make good choices. I'm still working my way through this, but I might even argue that it is unwise to attempt to force good choices. But that deserves more thought. My point is that we can't really stop Rihanna from doing business with someone who once threatened her life, subjected her to near lethal force, and still manifests considerable violent anger when questioned about his behavior.

In Maine, where half of last year's murders were domestic-violence related, Gov. Paul LePage introduced two new bills to help reduce family violence, according to a report by Eric Russell on BDN.com. LePage has personal experience -- his father was a violent alcoholic who beat up his family regularly. After his father broke his nose, LePage ran away from home when he was 11 years old.

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Thanks for the roundup, Jane. It's a bit like riding a roller coaster. I felt inspired by the creative and supportive programs in both Haiti and Japan, only to be deflated by Rhianna's failure to stay out of harms way. I think the juxtaposition of these different situations--yet all of them concerning victims of traumatic experiences--points to how complex trauma is, how different the effects are when the "perpetrator" is nature versus another human being, and how different types of support are needed.

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