JoinTheNet (IV) All Over Europe – Dissemination of material for education and training on health symptoms caused by Violence (PTSD)

10 training seminars were held, which resulted in 117 trained professionals (109 women & 8 men).

The trained professionals were mainly psychologists (25.9%) & social workers (42.3%). The absence of physicians was evident (only 2 physicians participated, 1 psychiatrist & 1 gynecologist), as well as of lawyers and police officers except of few psychologists working at the Police’s Health Department. Other professionals that participated were: family/mental health consultants (4.3%), nurses (1.7%), speech therapists (2.6%), special educators (1.7%), sociologists (4.3%), students of psychology and social work (4.3%), health visitors (2.6%) and others, e.g. ergotherapists, social anthropologists and administrative employees (8.5%).

The seminars were implemented successfully and found to be highly effective. More specifically, participants were asked if they would recommend to a colleague of them to attend this seminar and 100% of them replied positively. Moreover the participants’ responses mean rate to the question: “what is the likelihood to choose to attend a similar seminar in the future?” (on a scale from 0%-100%) was 91%.

In general evaluation results indicted a large increase in all participants’ knowledge concerning various aspects (e.g. trauma, PTSD, domestic violence) after the end of the seminar, as compared to their knowledge prior to the seminar.

Participants were almost absolutely satisfied by the DVD, the Guide with support services that was distributed to them as well as by the way the seminar was organized. One more indication of participants’ high satisfaction was that the mean rate of their replies to the question: “On a scale from 0 to 10 please rate the degree to which this Seminar met your initial expectations” was 8.8.