Hector Fellow Thomas Elbert and a team of psychol­o­gists of Univer­sity of Konstanz found NETfacts

The terri­ble wars currently raging in Europe and around the world sometimes lead to severe trauma in the affected popula­tions. There­fore, in addition to the question of polit­i­cal as well as monetary support for the countries under attack, such as Ukraine, it is also impor­tant to devote atten­tion to psycho­log­i­cal reappraisal and assistance.

The trauma researchers Maggie Schauer, Frank Neuner and Hector Fellow Thomas Elbert devel­oped the Narra­tive Exposure Therapy (NET) about 15 years ago as an effec­tive form of therapy for severe trauma­ti­za­tion, which can also be used for mobile missions in crisis areas.

An exten­sion of this form of therapy, the NETfacts system, founded recently by a team of psychol­o­gists and conflict researchers from the Univer­sity of Konstanz, among them HFA alumni Anja Rukundo-Zeller, in cooper­a­tion with the aid organi­za­tion "vivo inter­na­tional". This system offers the possi­bil­ity to include the commu­nity in which the traumatic event took place. Thus, a collec­tive memory is created for what happened, which is also comple­mented by the individ­ual experi­ences of each person. Collec­tive remem­ber­ing is impor­tant, in addition to the individ­ual coming to terms with collec­tive traumatic events, for placing what happened in the biogra­phy of the community.