Delegates from over 40 countries were welcomed to Georgia’s capital for the 18th Biennial Conference of the European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
Hosted by the Georgian Society for Psychotrauma, 493 delegates came together under the theme Exploring New Approaches for Healing and Recovery in Times of Global Uncertainty and Extreme Stress across keynotes, symposia, flash talks, masterclasses and poster sessions.
Opened by conference co-chair Professor Jana D Javakhishvili and ESTSS President Professor Dominic Murphy, ESTSS 2025 began by honouring all the recipients of the prestigious 2025 biennial ESTSS awards: Professor Ask Elklit (University of Southern Denmark) and Professor Rolf Kleber (Utretch University); Dr Victoria Williamson (Bath University); Psychotrauma Expertise Center (PSYTREC, Netherlands). Conference also joined in honouring the authors of the European Journal of Psychotraumatology Best Paper award.
One of my hopes for ESTSS 2025 is that we would leave as ambassadors for Georgia, and we’ve come together a family
– Professor Dominic Murphy, ESTSS President
In his opening address, Prof. Murphy reflected that “These are troubling times, but I draw strength from both the ESTSS family coming together with a shared purpose, and also that our community continues to grow.”
The three ESTSS 2025 keynotes looked reflected on the past whilst strongly facing the future of psychotraumatology research and treatment. Professor Jonathan Bisson (Cardiff University) outlined his two-decades of ground-breaking work in developing, implementing and evaluating digital guided therapy. They key, was that digital therapy delivered via the web or app based on existing evidence-based interventions can be empowering for the user, more universally accessible, adaptable to lifestyle and commitments, discreet, and can be continued past the traditional treatment end-point. Through the story of the Springapp, Prof Bisson explored how digital interventions have been shown to be comparatively effective for mild-to-moderate PTSD as in-person TF-CBT, but with potentially lower (therapist) costs and time (https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2021-069405). “I don’t argue that digital is the only choice,” he said instead explaining that digital interventions have a role to play in the provision of different offers as part of patient-centred care and have the potential to be adapted for different groups, conditions and audiences.
Dr Isaac Galatzer-Levy (Google) began by acknowledging that throughout the history of psychology and psychiatry there has been a constant move from observation to systematic measurement. Today, devices such as smartwatches or imaging allow us to take fine-grained measurements that we understand and observe – such as eye-blink, facial responses, voice patterns – but that have previously been difficult to capture and analyse. The challenge is how to integrate and analyse this multimodal and constantly changing data. This, he posited is where increased computing power and artificial intelligence (AI) has a role to play. Dr Galatzer-Levy took the ESTSS 2025 audience through the opportunities and current limitations of AI. He cautioned that there is no reason or understanding in AI (https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2410.07391); generative models will never be able to ‘think’ for you. However, as AI becomes more engrained and ubiquitous, the human is still firmly here and it is incumbent on us to work out how to use it best for us all as a tool.
Professor Jana D. Javakhishvili (Ilia State University) wove together two streams of thought in her keynote address: the societal dimension of trauma and then need to explore interventions that are effective during ongoing threat. The societal domain has been underestimated and under-explored in contrast than the intra- and inter-personal, she argued. Prof. Javakhishvili said that the processing of trauma requires an combination of acknowledgement, science, art and cultural rituals, justice, compensation, services, rehabilitation and recovery at a personal, state, governmental and societal level. She went on to state that in an increasingly unstable world, care and healing should also be promoted during ongoing or protracted threat and conflict and cited ongoing collaborative work in Belarus on the Samopomoch platform (https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(23)00120-7)
More than 150 academic posters were featured across the topic streams, with Jeanet Karchoud (Amsterdam UMC) and colleagues awarded the top prize for their poster Short Screener for PTSD Risk: Development and external validation of a short prognostics screening internment for PTSD on year following individual civilian trauma. Also commended were Cornelia Mǎirean and Alexandra Cobzeanu (Alexandru Ioan Cuza University) and Lisa Steenkamp (Sinai Centrum).
Reflecting the host city, ESTSS 2025 was a global meeting point featuring invited panels from the Global Collaboration on Traumatic Stress, International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, and the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. Meaning ‘place of warmth’, Tbilisi with its rich history proved the perfect venue as delegates also enjoyed cultural highlights and experiences including examples of Georgian polyphonic singing, walking tours, a welcome reception, and formal dinner and local entertainment. Proceedings were recorded by photojournalist, Daro Sulakauri.
In her plenary address, Professor Nino Makhashvili (Georgian Society of Psychotrauma) noted that both trauma and resilience have multiple faces and facets, and that we have a shared responsibility to treat, witness and integrate in the face of ongoing global challenges.
In closing, Prof. Murphy paid special tribute to co-chairs Prof. Javakhishvili and Lela Tsiskarishvili and reflected that all attendees had come together as a family and would leave as ambassadors for Georgia.
The live coverage of ESTSS2025 can be viewed on the ESTSS X and BlueSky feeds.
The 19th Biennial Conference will be held in 2027 Coimbra, Portugal. More details can be found on www.estss2027.com
