Conference

Healing Balkans Conference: “Healing is Possible”, Sarajevo, 28 May, 2024

“Healing is Possible,” aims to raise awareness about PTSD and trauma, including individual, transgenerational, war/post-war, and collective forms. Organized to initiate dialogue between experts and the wider public, the conference will feature presentations by scientists, experts, and clinicians/therapists, offering insights into new therapies and treatments. Intended for scientists, doctors, therapists, psychologists, activists, and the general public interested in alternative methods for treating mental disorders like depression, anxiety, PTSD, and addictions, the event will also explore the scientific and therapeutic potential of psychedelics in a controlled, therapeutic context. Please find the details of the agenda below.

Key topics

1. How have you survived? How do we define trauma? What is traumatic about trauma and how trauma is defined, diagnosed and treated, also based on cultural context. Is the body the seat of trauma and center of healing? (Eric Vermetten MD, PhD Landegg University, MAPS Europe, Healing Balkans Advisor; Marcela Ot’alora G and Bruce Poulter – MAPS US, California). In this session, we will explore the very definition of trauma looking at different cultural, historical and land-based contexts. Is Western trauma different from black and brown trauma, or trauma in the Balkans, or the Middle East? Can diagnostic tools such as CAPS-5 be applied in the same way as in Western cultures to people, who have collectively accumulated unthinkable amounts of trauma (collectively, individually, and ancestrally)? We will take a close look at racial trauma and nationalistic and war-related trauma. (“Decolonize Trauma”)

2. What have I lost, What am I trying to lose? Going Back to Our Roots and inviting us to sing our songs: Unearthing cultural wisdom in the Balkans, Eurasia, learning from “autochtone” cultures and from each other. Re-union with ourselves, our bodies, our past wisdoms, ancestors, and core principles that have served local people for centuries.

3. Carrying poetry and music into healing spaces. Grandmothers. Poetry workshop. What makes our lives eternal but each memory of a bloodline, local medicines, medicine people, evlije, etc.

4. Healing is possible: How can we find the best medicine? Different modalities to treat war-related PTSD and trauma (i.e. EMDR, psychedelics-MDMA, SE)

Registration & gathering details:

Conference Agenda:

8:30-9:30 Registration

9:30 a.m. Opening Ceremony

(Marsela Pećanac, Zina Beširević, PhD, Emina Čengić, MD, Healing Balkans)

10:00 -11:15 Keynote Lecture: Presentations on trauma definition, diagnosis, and treatment

(Marcela Ot’alora and Bruce Poulter MAPS, US)

11:30 – 12:15 “Behind the veil of social perception”

(Marija Franka Žuljević, MD, PhD, School of Medicine, Split)

12:15-13:30 Lunch and networking

14:00-15:40 Expert Lectures:

Clinical Study