Israeli experts help ease trauma of Manchester bombing
A TEAM of Israelis have trained more than 90 British psychologists and therapists to offer a ground-breaking treatment to those suffering distress over the Manchester Arena bombing.
Two specialists in coping with posttraumatic stress were brought to the UK last week to help in the aftermath of the terror attack in which 22 people were killed.
Plans to train psychologists in Manchester were under way before the bombing, with Rabbi Dov Benyaacov Kurtzman, an Israeli therapist who runs the charity Heads Up CIO in the city, discussing arrangements with specialists from Tel Hai College — Professors Yoni Gidron and Moshe Farchi.
But, according to Dr Sandi Mann, a clinical psychologist who volunteers with Heads Up, the plans were brought forward after last week’s atrocity.
“We had our meetings, but then the Arena bombing happened and I was in shock. We weren’t ready. But Dov decided to go on and mobilised his team,” she said.
The professors, from Israel’s Tel Hai College, have developed “a new protocol in response to trauma” which is used by the Israeli army in direct response to terror attacks.
They have trained 90 therapists, all professionals who have volunteered, to show them how the treatment operates. Some of the therapists, like Dr Mann, are Jewish, some are not, but they have all embraced the Israeli method.
“The treatment actually works in two sections,” Dr Mann said, “to respond in the first 72 hours after an attack, and then to deal with the subsequent 72 hours. Obviously, we missed the first part but we are now trained and ready, and we can offer a psychological trauma response unit which can go anywhere in Britain, at two hours’ notice”.
Initially, the team has set up premises in Tib Street, in central Manchester, which will operate for the next month as a drop-in centre for anyone who has been affected by the Arena bombing.
“We are not a tea-and-sympathy kind of treatment,” Dr Mann said. “This protocol aims to get people back to normal as soon as possible. The aim is to prevent post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But anyone can come in, no appointments are necessary, and our trained therapists will talk to them”.
She said she had been “overwhelmed” by the outpouring of help from people in Manchester, particularly from the Jewish community.
“As well as the two professors, we are bringing over two Israeli administrators who have experience in running these kinds of centres, and when I asked for temporary accommodation for them — they are each coming for a week at a time — I had so many offers. We’ve had food donated by local kosher eateries — people have been fantastic”.
After the Tib Street centre closes, the plan is to turn the team into a mobile response unit which can go to schools and hospitals. Dr Mann said that the protocol has been tested extensively in Israel, particularly on victims of bomb attacks in Sderot, an Israeli town close to the Gaza border.
THE CHIEF Rabbi has urged Jews to show compassion and consideration beyond their own community in response to last week’s terrorist attack in Manchester.
Conducting a special commemorative service in the city, Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis also recited the prayer he composed for the victims of the attack, which claimed 22 lives.
He told the congregation at the Holy Law Synagogue in Prestwich, north Manchester: “We have been confronted by outright evil. The wickedness of a premeditated attack on children right here in the heart of the city of Manchester.
“The response of this city to hatred, to terror and to murder has been love and consideration and compassion.
“If your consideration and your compassion, if your support only belongs to your own community… That is treif way of existence. It is an abomination, it is a desecration of God’s name, and it needs to be stamped out.
“The response to this terrorist act has been one through which we recognise the evil of the act of murder — mass murder — and at the same time the necessity for us within our communities to look beyond our communities, to share what we have, to act with compassion and to build a society which is harmonious on every way.”
Monday’s service, which was organised by the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester, was attended by senior representatives of Greater Manchester Police, alongside members of the Manchester Jewish community and the veteran Labour politician, Ivan Lewis, who is defending his Bury South seat in the general election.
Rabbi Mirvis’s prayer in memory of the attack mourned for those who were murdered, and asked God to “grant consolation to their families in the depths of their grief”.
It was distributed to rabbis and Jewish communities around the country, with the recommendation that it be recited over Shabbat.