THE RESULTS of efforts to tackle domestic violence in Cyprus have raised interest in Greece and Turkey, resulting in one therapist being invited to train colleagues from both countries.<\/p>\n
Andreas Orphanides, a psychologist specialised in marriage, family and sex therapy, is an associate of the Association for the Prevention and Handling of Violence in the Family.<\/p>\n
For the last four years, Orphanides has been working with the association on implementing the US programme called \u2018Love without Hurt\u2019 in Cyprus.<\/p>\n
Orphanides was keen to work on the programme and adapt it to the needs of Cyprus after noticing that services were provided to the women survivors of violence, but nothing on the male perpetrators.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t use the terms victim because we consider you are labelling someone as being victimised, whereas a survivor survives the violence,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The programme is geared towards both the survivor and the perpetrator.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not anger management. It has to do with changing perceptions so we don\u2019t wind up feeling angry or abused, neither the survivor nor the perpetrator. It\u2019s about waking up people to a feeling of compassion for oneself and others,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you understand, you don\u2019t get angry. If you don\u2019t understand, you end up blaming that person for the way you feel.\u201d<\/p>\n
The programme was implemented on a pilot basis in 2007 with \u201cgreat results\u201d and subsequently repeated for another three years. \u201cIt helps reduce violence and anxiety, and increases self-esteem,\u201d explained Orphanides.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe entered a European project along with Spain, Bulgaria and Finland. We implemented the same programme in the Cyprus prison. I have to say we had the best results,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The programme was going so well it attracted the interest of psychologists, and even ministries in Greece and Turkey.<\/p>\n
This year the programme is not being run in Cyprus because Orphanides and the association are focusing on training other trainers to expand it across Cyprus and Greece, which has shown much interest.<\/p>\n
The Greek Justice Ministry has expressed interest in implementing it in Greek prisons, after hearing about the programme during Orphanides\u2019 presentation of his work in Brussels.<\/p>\n
In the same way, Dassana centre in Istanbul heard about his work through the Council of Europe and recently invited him to spend ten days there, conducting workshops on the domsetic violence programme.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were very enthused about what was going on. While I was there, a Council of Europe press conference on domestic violence was going on and the statistics in Turkey are very high,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
During his stay in Turkey, he also had the chance to see people privately, where he established a great need for the programme. \u201cAll of them had been sexually abused from childhood,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The association is now working with the Dassana centre to organise the training of 200 psychologists in Istanbul while Orphanides heard that the chief of police of a nearby city, some three hours drive away, also heard about his work and wants him to go train his people there.<\/p>\n
via Workshops in Turkey for Greek Cypriot psychologist – Cyprus Mail<\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" THE RESULTS of efforts to tackle domestic violence in Cyprus have raised interest in Greece and Turkey, resulting in one therapist being invited to train colleagues from both countries. Andreas Orphanides, a psychologist specialised in marriage, family and sex therapy, is an associate of the Association for the Prevention and Handling of Violence in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":179167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,845],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cyprus","category-scitech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}