Building Children's Resilience in the Context of Collective Trauma

Abstract: Dr. Guzder will share the results of her research on a school-based project that was designed to respond to the collective trauma of a post-slavery society that struggles with high rates of violence. This project started in 2005 in inner city Kingston, Jamaica as a collaboration between the Universities of West Indies and McGill. Dr. Guzder first implemented the Dream a World (DAW) intervention with 30 high-risk children aged 8 to 12. The DAW resilience-promoting intervention addresses academic failure and disruptive behaviors with arts-based and remedial working groups. The success of the pilot project led to three years of Grand Challenges funding to implement the intervention in four additional schools with 100 children. In this presentation, Dr. Guzder also discusses challenges to implementing mental health prevention initiatives.

Brief Biography: Jaswant Guzder, MD, FRCP is Head of Child Psychiatry and Co-Director of the Childhood Disorders Day Hospital at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. She is also a Full Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine at McGill University, where she is active in the Divisions of Child Psychiatry and Social and Transcultural Psychiatry. Dr. Guzder was a founding Co-Director of the Jewish General Hospital’s Cultural Consultation Service and is currently a senior clinician and trainer in the service.

Sponsored by the Department of Psychology.
For more information, contact Catherine Costigan at costigan@uvic.ca

Thursday, February 2, 2017

5:30 - 7:00pm

DSB C128