It is a great honour to address you, members of ESTSS, as the 15th president of our society. To me ESTSS has been a home since the start of my professional life. Unique from any other society, because of its cultural diversity and the way that is embraced. ESTSS is a collaboration, a union of local societies, all different in size and shape, but with a shared mission: bringing together science and best practice, creating networks where professionals can connect and share, with the goal to advance the field of psychotraumatology. I am humbled and thrilled to contribute to our cause and proud to be part of such a dedicated group of international colleagues.
Taking over the gavel in this 30th anniversary year, the year of our long-awaited in person conference in Belfast, makes me feel even more privileged. Our biannual conferences have been the center point of our society and ground for many of the most memorable moments in ESTSS history. In our newsletters we will highlight some of these memories. We start at the beginning, with an interview with Erica de Loos about her father’s drive for ESTSS: our first president and one of the founders, Wolter de Loos. Over the next year we are eager to hear about your memories of ESTSS. We welcome you to share them with us via our social media, at the Belfast conference and at local society events, as for instance recently at the Lithuanian society for psychotraumatology (LTPA) ’s annual conference, which you can read more about in this newsletter.
One of the major accomplishments of our field in the past thirty years has been that knowledge about how traumatic stress can have a lasting impact on people’s lives has become widespread. Still it involves ongoing effort to educate and train service providers, media and public in trauma-informed care. Our network can provide the know-how and materials that are needed to support survivors at different stages of war, disasters or other impactful events. The recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria have caused immense destruction and losses, grief and hardship. On estss.org we provide materials that can help professionals and non-professionals how to lend effective support in the immediate and longer term after a humanitarian crisis. We also appeal to you, as part of our society, to help by sharing your expertise, guidance and support to the survivors and colleagues affected by this disaster.
One of the ways we have come together in support over the past year, has been through the ESTSS4UKRAINE Taskforce. The main focus of the Taskforce is “helping the helpers”: providing supervisions for mental health workers in Ukraine to help them relieve the psychological consequences of the Russian invasion. Sadly, with the ongoing war, the need remains high and will be so for a long time. ESTSS is determined to keep up facilitating these activities, but additional funding is needed. We are very grateful and proud to have so much voluntary involvement from experts to create and provide training courses and supervise groups. There is always room to get involved, please feel free to contact us or the Taskforce, or to donate.
In this first newsletter of the anniversary year, there’s lots more to read up on. Don’t miss out on:
- the newly formed Developmental Trauma SIG’s webinar series, starting on Thursday March-30, with a free webinar on defining developmental trauma;
- the late breaking poster submission for Belfast, which closes on Friday March-24;
- the early bird rate for ESTSS 2023 in Belfast, which closes on Friday March-31;
- the latest news from the Global Collaboration on Traumatic Stress, including other upcoming traumatic stress events, and;
- our new ESTSS logo!
Looking forward to bringing you more news and seeing you at one of our events in the future, sincerely,
Joanne Mouthaan
ESTSS President 2023-2024
