Across the last 10 months Dr Felicity Thomas, co-director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Culture and Health, has run three successful workshops in Belarus and Ukraine after receiving a grant from the Medical Research Council’s MRC Confidence in Global Mental Health programme entitled “Trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences Springboard (TrACES)”.

Invitations were issued to a variety of people including psychiatrists, those with lived experiences and clinicians, encouraging them to attend and examine early life trauma (ELT) in low and middle-income countries. The partnership with the Minsk Regional Centre for Psychiatry and Addiction provided an opportunty for inter-European collaboration, and the events were held in Minsk and L’viv.

The three cross-disciplinary workshops focused on understanding the causes of early life trauma, how this may lead to negative mental health outcomes including suicide and substance abuse risks, and building capacity for resilience and identifying good practice to be shared amongst practitioners.

A full report will be available shortly.

Extra reading on The Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health’s transforming institutions and health across the life course can be found here.