How Psychology Fits In

In our mission statement, we emphasize a goal for peace building. We believe that in order to re- establish peace in a post-war country, it is necessary to rehabilitate former combatants and war-affected youth, integrate them back into society and work along with communities to lower stigmatization. It is also important to work with war victims who are unwilling to forgive and let go of feelings of revenge towards perpetrators.

Most rehabilitation programs for former combatants are centered on vocational and educational services, while most peace building integration efforts focus on establishing dialogues between families and communities. But when participants attempt to sit and learn in a classroom, oftentimes the drug dependence, post-traumatic stress, depression and abuse – the silent consequences of war – make it impossible for them to succeed. Traumatic stress transports their minds and bodies back to war scenes and memories of torture and abuse while the professor is teaching something new. With depression, most enter rehabilitation programs with no confidence that they are capable to succeed or become a ‘good’ person, while their bodies are craving the substances that most were forced to take during the war in order to fight. Today, drugs are the remedy to numb post-traumatic stress symptoms, which only leads to more crime and violence. Among families and communities, the perpetrators’ traumatic stress is often expressed through avoidance and violent behavior. When these defense mechanisms are not addressed, they become obstacle to dialogue and they obstruct the mission of building peace.

Although there are many NGOs on ground doing outstanding work with peace building, our expertise is psychological intervention. Our goal is to fill a gap in existing efforts to build peace and to alleviate poverty. Second Chance Africa brings specialized state-of-the-art clinical services for post-traumatic stress, depression, and substance abuse and addiction, not only through direct services to the Liberian war-affected population, but also through consulting services for NGOs and government committees in order to complement their programs with clinical tools they can trust.