Healing Centers
There are Healing Centers in the United States and in other countries of the world.
Please review the links at the left-hand side of the page to learn more about Healing Centers.
This month's featured healing center:
The Center for Survivors of Torture and War Trauma (CSTWT)
St. Louis, Missouri
Story by CVT volunteer Diane Glorvigen
Client Story
“I’m getting better,” the young woman recently said, “because in my country people were looking for me to hurt me, and here people are looking for me to help me and to be kind.” She came from Africa, where she had been captured and brutally tortured. Then, miraculously, she escaped, going into hiding for a long period of time. But she was far from free. She was always looking over her shoulder, always expecting danger, never able to trust others.
Eventually she made her way to the United States and settled in St. Louis. She continued to suffer physical and psychological repercussions of her torture, so she connected with the Center for Survivors of Torture and War Trauma (CSTWT), where the staff surrounded her with an extensive network of supportive services. 
She joined a therapy group with a specially trained group worker, worked with a massage therapist, and learned relaxation techniques from a yoga master. Legal experts helped her apply for asylum. Volunteers took her shopping and helped her navigate the city transit system. Her parish priest even brought her to his house to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family. Her experience, one of hundreds of stories of healing at the CSTWT, is a perfect example of the Center’s wrap-around approach.
Roots in the Sanctuary Movement
These days, approximately 100 people per year receive culturally appropriate, holistic mental health services at the CSTWT, but the organization began with small-scale, individual efforts—a natural outgrowth of reaching out to neighbors in need. During the 1980s the Center’s founder and current clinical director, Jean Abbott, lived and worked in Guatemala. At the time, the region was plagued with horrific human rights abuses, so when Abbott returned to the US, she and a friend opened a sanctuary house. One person at a time, they offered shelter, assistance, and companionship to undocumented Guatemalans fleeing violence.
Gradually Abbott, a licensed clinical social worker, realized that the sanctuary guests were experiencing the aftereffects of torture. She began to see that resettlement wasn’t enough; these survivors needed support and treatment that would allow them to heal. During the 1990s she expanded operations to people from other countries and worked to form a loose coalition of professionals and volunteers who collaborated to provide a variety of services. By 2001 this effort coalesced into a nonprofit corporation with a staff, interns, and a board of directors.
Holistic Programming 
Today the Center has numerous programs for both adults and youth. Their treatment model includes trauma-informed cognitive behavioral therapy, strengths-based therapy, mind/body therapies, yoga, massage, group work, legal assistance, social outings, arts opportunities, and more—a wide-ranging mix that is tailored to the needs and capabilities of each client. “Good therapy by itself can accomplish a lot,” says Abbott, “but we think the holistic approach is more effective and long lasting.”
Synergistic Partnerships
One of the keys to achieving this comprehensive service model lies in the CSTWT’s ability to cultivate relationships with partner organizations. Care Access for New Americans (an initiative of the St. Louis Mental Health Board that provides legal services, casework, and psychiatric services) is just one of many examples. “We are too small to do it all,” Abbott says. “Working as a collaborative, we can guarantee much more holistic services.”
Empowerment
The bedrock of the Center’s methodology has always been—and will always be—profound respect for the individual. This sense of respect permeates every action and every process at the Center. As Abbott puts it, “If there is anything people need when they have been helpless or under the control of others, it is to feel empowered and equal.”
