Controlled trials of rehabilitation programs for torture victims
Research project
Contact person: Marianne Engberg
Currently, no experimental examinations of rehabilitating torture
survivors and traumatised refugees are carried out. The most
reliable knowledge about how a given effort or treatment works
originates from results of randomised controlled trials. The trials
are based upon groups of people who are either subjected to
receiving the intended effort (the intervention group), an
alternative effort, which perhaps is already ongoing (the
intervention group), or no effort (the control group).
By randomised controlled examinations, an impression of the
individual's progress arises, either if the person does or does not
receive the mentioned effort. Other factors than the mentioned
effort/intervention, one wishes to measure the effect of, can,
during time, effect the course of the individual person, i.e. the
natural course, treatment or events in relation to the local
community. Therefore, often it is not possible to conclude anything
positive about a certain effect of an intervention if the results
are based on examinations where one is only following the course
for those who is receiving the intervention.
However, the examinations regarding the effect of rehabilitation
of torture survivors and other traumatised refugees are provisional
and few. Randomised controlled studies of the effect of treatment
and rehabilitation of torture survivors and other traumatised
refugees are in the planning phase.