Testimony as Transformation: Culturally- and Spiritually-Adapted Narrative Therapy among Cambodian Genocide Survivors

Lesley will be presenting her research about mental health treatment for survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. From 1975-1979, the communist regime was responsible for the deaths of roughly two million people, or a quarter of the country’s population.
Her project focused on Testimonial Therapy, which was introduced to the country in 2009 in the context of transitional justice efforts, and adapted by Cambodian NGO workers. Although the therapy at first seemed to conflict with local ethno-psychological and spiritual beliefs that encourage forgetting and emotional detachment from past trauma, Lesley found the therapy proved surprisingly effective in several respects. Drawing on Cambodian Buddhist concepts, therapy participants were able to create narratives that they believed “had usefulness” for current society and offered regenerative effects for both individual wellbeing and social networks.