VIRTIS is committed to alleviate the suffering and promote the healing and the posttraumatic growth of veterans, refugees, and immigrants through research, education, training, clinical and psychosocial services, and strategic partnerships.
BACKGROUND
VIRTIS is supported by a staff of trauma experts and immigrant community leaders assisting refugees with their transition from war and refugee camps to a new life in America. We facilitate psychosocial integration by offering access to local resources, an advocacy bridge to policy makers, culturally competent transpersonal psychology interventions, and advance the field of refugee trauma studies through transnational research.
With 14 million legal immigrants who call today California home, our state leads the nation in the number of refugees who resettle here. The collapse of the Soviet Union and of and its satellites in the Warsaw Pact, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the conditions of Iran have led to a dramatic increase of refugees from these countries. Sacramento County, CA, the most diverse metropolitan area in the US, is home to an increasing population of Eastern European, Middle Eastern, and Central Asian immigrants with distinct languages, culture, religious, and sociopolitical experiences. They tend to be poor, reside in highly concentrated ethnic enclaves, and experience of sense of alienation in their adoptive country. For many refugees, the trauma preceding the flight and followed by the trauma of poor acculturation and alienation results in a severe loss of meaning in life. Cognitive restructuring models of coping (e.g., Park & Ai, 2006) may explain why some trauma survivors develop PTSD and others do not. PTSD is believed to result when a traumatic event shatters core beliefs that establish meaning in life (Janoff-Bulman, 1992) depriving survivors of their future story (Koga, 2008). If people cannot cognitively restructure traumatic events, regain meaning in life, and rebuild core beliefs, depression and guilt may develop. These problems and the significant demographic growth of the refugees in California poses serious challenges both for the immigrants and for the health care system- in particular, because these people do not fit official classifications of disadvantaged minorities due to their skin color. This racial and political invisibility in addition to their sociopolitical history, poverty, acculturation stress, unemployment, and stigma contribute to this population’s high risk for acute and chronic mental disorders, and to insufficiencies in mental health services.
ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS:
VIRTIS has four main goals summarized in the RISE acronym:
Research:advance the field of trauma studies through epidemiological surveys, qualitative studies of psychology of violence, cultural, religious, and spiritual modulators of resilience, and outcome evaluations of transpersonal interventions in vivo and in virtual reality.
Integrate:key dimensions of trauma services (public health, psychosocial, transcultural psychiatry, counseling, cultural and medical anthropology, transpersonal psychology, complementary and alternative medicine, neuroscience, and virtual reality exposure therapy) into a comprehensive model of mental health.
Synergize:transnational data, knowledge, skills, resources, and effort to develop best practices along the population movement continuum.
Empower:trauma survivors through patrnerships, community-based participatory research, education, interventions, and advocacy.
History & Partnerships
Founded in January 2009, VIRTIS represents a growing number of physicians, nurses, psychologists, military, public health, and other professionals who have been themselves war veterans, refugees, immigrants, and survivors of tyranny and war atrocities. We are committed to help traumatized people rise out of the past, regain their health and spirit, and plant a positive and hopeful view of the future. Based in California’s capital city, Sacramento, VIRTIS is a partner of the UC Global Health Institute, Center of Expertise on Migration and Health , the first multidisciplinary, university-based program in the world devoted to systematically studying the health consequences of international population movements and developing more effective strategies to address them. We have also have the privilege of partnering with Migration & Health Research Center (MAHRC) a joint UC Berkeley and UC Davis initiative, UC Davis Center for Healthcare Policy and Research, the Kyrgyz Psychiatric Association, Epicentre in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, International Association of Iranian Mental Health (IAIMH), OMID Advocates for Human Rights, universities, and service agencies in USA, Europe, Middle East, and Central Asia, California immigrant organizations and radio stations like Bamdad Persian Radio and the Russian and Ukrainian Nashe Radio. Current work includes mapping and needs assessments of the Afghan, Iranian, and Russian-speaking immigrant communities in Northern CA, projects in refugee camps in Turkey, and in the Kyrgyz-Uzbek complex emergency in Osh and Jalalabad, Kyrgyzstan.