Surviving trauma

Amanda Lindhout to speak at MUN PTSD conference about her 15 months in captivity

Canadian humanitarian, journalist and author Amanda Lindhout, who was held captive and tortured in Somalia for 15 months, will speak in St. John’s next week about her experience.

Lindhout, whose 2013 memoir “A House in the Sky” has become a New York Times bestseller, will be a keynote speaker at a conference on post-traumatic stress disorder at Memorial University in St. John’s July 31 to Aug. 2.

In her book, co-written with Sara Corbett, Lindhout admits she was naive when she traveled to Somalia as a self-taught freelance journalist, having previously sold stories and photos to publications in Red Deer and in Afghanistan. She went to Somalia with Australian photojournalist Nigel Brennan, and both were kidnapped by armed men who had actually been targeting two National Geographic reporters instead.

Over the next 459 days, Lindhout was starved, beaten and raped. She and Brennan were eventually freed after their families gave up on the Canadian and Australian governments and negotiated a ransom themselves.

Lindhout underwent significant treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a condition affecting some people who have experienced either a single dangerous, frightening or shocking event, or a succession of trauma.

While Statistics Canada says the lifetime prevalence of PTSD in the general population is about eight per cent, certain occupations have higher numbers, particularly when it comes to law enforcement and correctional officers, first responders such as firefighters and paramedics, journalists and members of the armed forces.

It’s this occupational PTSD that united MUN criminology assistant professor Rose Ricciardelli and Stephen Bornstein, MUN professor in medicine and political science and director of SafetyNet, an alliance for research and education in occupational health and safety at MUN.

“Rose suggested that PTSD is a hot issue at the moment — you can’t have lived through the last few years and read the news without knowing about it — and she suggested that it’s an occupational issue, which I hadn’t considered,” Bornstein explained.

The pair also thought a PTSD conference might be fitting, given the 100th anniversary this month of the Battle of Beaumont Hamel.

“If you consider how large the military population is here, and how they suddenly got launched into a real battle with real trauma, you can understand how prevalent PTSD could be in Canada,” Bornstein said, noting many people with PTSD symptoms don’t seek treatment.

Other illnesses can also be misdiagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder, he said.

Ricciardelli, Bornstein and a committee of co-ordinators representing psychology, history, social work and police studies at MUN have organized the conference, which will bring together experts, researchers and community partners with an interest in mental health and PTSD specifically.

The conference schedule is varied, and includes topics on post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse (something Bornstein says is common), the effect of the disorder on families and new approaches to treatment, including virtual reality, art therapy and marijuana. Some of the participating researchers have seen great benefits from the drug on PTSD patients, Bornstein said, though much is unknown.

“I expect it to be one of the most interesting and provocative and controversial topics,” he said.

Presentations will come in the form of panel discussions, workshops — including one facilitated by former NHL player Theo Fleury and Kim Barthel, his co-author of “Conversations with a Rattlesnake” — a film screening and poetry readings.

Lindhout’s talk on Aug. 1 will be the only event open to nonregistered conference-goers, at a cost of $43.

There are 200 delegates registered for the conference, with approximately 50 spaces left. More information can be found online at www.ptsd2016.mun.ca or by emailing ptsd2016@ mun.ca.