Dear Colleagues,
One month has passed since the 16th conference of the European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. Once more, on behalf of ESTSS, I would like to express deep gratitude to everyone: the organizers, the speakers and all the participants. Your wonderful contributions – both scholarly and personal – made our joint event a success story.
The presentation of information on latest evidence and best practices, joint reflection and lively exchange have inspired us to further action toward providing the best possible care to trauma sufferers through prevention and treatment, with the aim of making our region a better place to live.
Like a good wine, the conference could be evaluated by the “aftertaste” it leaves. Therefore, since one month has passed, we’ve started a collection of impressions from our board members on particular events and moments of the conference. We offer them here for your attention, along with pictures capturing memorable moments.
Jana Javakhishvili, ESTSS president
"I am impressed by the very high scientific level of the conference. There were so many interesting symposia that the choice was really difficult. Of special importance to me was the ESTSS panel "Trauma care in Europe", where we had the opportunity to learn about the situation in various European countries. For me personally, this conference was also a time of very intense integration with people, during meetings in breaks between sessions, in the evenings, during joint dinners, or during a wonderful historical walking tour. In general, I had a very strong feeling that we are a real community and we have still a lot of important things to do."
Małgorzata Dragan, ESTSS board member, PTBST
“I particularly enjoyed Dr. Elzinga’s keynote talk, which took an intergenerational family perspective on childhood abuse and neglect. The results she presented spanned from neural networks to the experiences of family members across generations, with findings neatly fitted into one model that still felt complex enough for this multi-facetted subject. The talk gave me new perspectives on a subject I have worked with for many years, and I have found myself coming back to points that were made in the talk on multiple occasions.”
Helene Aakvaag, ESTSS board member, individual members’ representative
“During lunchtime there was the possibility to see the documentary ‘Reconstructing Utoya’. It was a very deeply moving film about how four of the survivors had experienced the moment of the murders itself and how it had affected their lives. The psychologist who had coached the four young people during the time of preparations was there to introduce the film and to answer questions. For me watching this documentary said more than ten books or researches, I could feel the suffering and the impact. But it was also a message of hope, these young people, with all there scars and wounds, are very resilient and look positively to the future. The film stayed for a long time in my thoughts.”
Heidi Deknut, ESTSS board member, BIP
“I liked our presidential message: Together we are stronger!”
Miranda Olff, ex-officio board member, EJPT Editor
“There is so much to highlight! Let me start with the panel on open science held on June 16, with the participation of Miranda Olff (chair), Karel Luyben, Caroline Sutton, Nancy Kassam-Adams and Ineke Wessel. During the panel, the current movement towards more open science was explored; the guiding principles of Open Data and Fair Data discussed; the EOSC project – Europe’s virtual environment for all researchers to store, manage, analyze and reuse data – presented; the question - “Can we make traumatic stress research data fair?” proposed to the audience to reflect on. I believe the panel highlighted an extremely important trend in the contemporary scientific world that contributes to increased transparency of the scientific process and accessibility of the results.
I am also very appreciative of the speech of past-president Berthold Gerson, especially his three concluding remarks in which he proposed for our consideration as the professional community a kind of road map for further actions:
To be continued!”
Jana Javakhishvili, ESTSS president, GSP
Do you have comments to share? We invite our society members who wish to share their impressions on this or that session, event or moments of the conference to email us at the following address: secretariat@estss.org
