Ongoing Research Projects at ITG

In March 2017, the Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychotraumatology (IPP) began operations in Duhok, northern Iraq. By the end of 2024, all of the IPP’s activities and responsibilities—in particular, the establishment and continuation of the master’s program and psychotherapy training—are to be gradually taken over by the University of Duhok itself.

In parallel, a scientific evaluation of the overall project is being conducted, and the findings are being documented in the form of a handbook. To this end, all processes of the pilot project are being recorded, and participants are being interviewed about their experiences. The insights gained in this way are intended to improve the quality of training at the IPP and contribute to the sustainable planning of teaching and research. Another goal is to make the processes of the pilot project transparent, thereby serving as a best-practice example for other universities in Iraq and in other (former) conflict regions.

The evaluation project is funded by the Ministry of Science, Research, and the Arts of the State of Baden-Wuerttemberg.

According to experts, the psychological trauma suffered by survivors of crimes against humanity can be healed, at the earliest, only when justice is served for those affected. While it is the role of the justice system to hold perpetrators accountable and to secure appropriate means of redress, even when this occurs, it is not certain that the psychological well-being of those affected can be sufficiently improved as a result. To support survivors in their healing process, it is therefore also important to examine and address the psychological consequences of experiences of injustice.

The aim of our study is to identify psychological and emotional strategies for coping with severe experiences of injustice and to examine the connections between a violated sense of justice and other psychological and psychosocial consequences of experiences of violence.

To this end, we are working on the development of an inventory to assess perceptions of injustice among traumatized individuals. The inventory is being developed in collaboration with experts in the field of justice and based on focus groups with survivors of various experiences of injustice in crisis regions around the world. To test the validity and reliability of the inventory, studies are planned with genocide survivors in their countries of origin and refugees in Germany.

Building on the Trauma Workbook (Kizilhan et al. 2019) developed at the Institute for Transcultural Health Research (ITG), we aim, in a second step, to integrate our findings into trauma therapy for survivors of oppression, persecution, and violence from war-torn and crisis-stricken regions. To this end, we are planning modular units that focus on addressing issues of justice and injustice. These are intended to be implemented later in psychotherapeutic and psychosocial work. Their effectiveness will be evaluated in practice by comparing them with existing treatment approaches.