{"id":1896,"date":"2025-05-01T08:33:55","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T08:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/?p=1896"},"modified":"2025-05-13T14:29:18","modified_gmt":"2025-05-13T14:29:18","slug":"the-family-that-heals-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/?p=1896","title":{"rendered":"The Family that Heals Together"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By leveraging research into treatments that empower families to help members manage trauma, Bar-Ilan is creating ripples of resilience\u2014and a culture of agency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1915,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspiration","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"

The Louis and Gabi Weisfeld School of Social Work<\/h5>\n

The Family that Heals Together<\/h1>\n

By leveraging research into treatments that empower families to help members manage trauma, Bar-Ilan is creating ripples of resilience\u2014and a culture of agency.<\/h3>\n

A Whole-Systems Approach<\/h6>

If your partner came home from fighting a war and suffered combat memories, what would you do to help him cope? If there\u2019s a surprising takeaway from trauma expert Prof. Rachel Dekel\u2019s research, it\u2019s this: Don\u2019t necessarily trust your instincts.<\/p>

\u201cWe know from our research that often our instincts are wrong,\u201d explains Dekel, the founder of the clinical-research center Ripples for Recovery in the Louis and Gabi Weisfeld School of Social Work. Considered one of Israel\u2019s leading experts on the effects of trauma on families, Dekel is co-author, together with Prof. Danny Horesh of the Department of Psychology, of a recent article on the effects of PTSD on IDF combat veterans\u2019 wives, recently published in the prestigious journal Psychological Trauma. \u201cFor instance, parents seeking to comfort a traumatized child may unintentionally entrench her fears. They do it out of love, but the result is still damaging. That\u2019s why, when it comes to trauma, evidence-based interventions are so important.\u201d It\u2019s also, she continues, why trauma can\u2019t be treated as the problem of a single patient. Indeed, after nearly three decades of studying trauma coping mechanisms and more than 180 peer-reviewed publications, Dekel insists that there should be an emphasis on putting \u201cfamilies in the center.\u201d The reason is simple: All of a family\u2019s members are affected by another member\u2019s trauma, and all of them play a role in his or her recovery.<\/p>\n\"Prof.\n

Prof. Rachel Dekel<\/h5>\n\"Prof.\n
Prof. Danny Horesh<\/h5>\n\"Dr.\n
Dr. Yael Shoval Zuckerman<\/h5>\n

Established with Horesh and Dr. Yael Shoval from the School of Social Work in response to the lack of treatments for trauma and PTSD from a family perspective, Ripples for Recovery applies research-based interventions for real-time benefit. At the same time, center staff constantly assess their interventions\u2019 efficacy, refining and updating strategies in response to patients\u2019 outcomes. Recognizing, after the start of Israel\u2019s war, that it was uniquely positioned to address the challenges so many Israeli families faced, Ripples for Recovery has developed three main types of trauma-informed family treatments: dyadic treatment, family treatment, and support for family members. Along with helping hundreds of families across the country directly, the center also trained government and IDF counselors in family-coping best practices, thus widening the circle of impact and raising the country\u2019s standard of care. In addition to helping Israeli society emerge stronger after the war, Dekel hopes these best practices can help families in other countries manage trauma successfully.<\/p>

\u201cThere was a family whose children were afraid to leave the house because of rocket fire. We worked with the parents and the children on ways to manage their anxiety. This past Hanukkah, they sent me a\u00a0photo of themselves at a public festival,\u201d recalls Dekel. \u201cIt was truly an expression of light casting out the darkness inside.\u201d<\/p>\n

Healing Wounds in Wartime<\/h6>\n

Number of social workers and psychologists in the Ripples for Recovery Clinic<\/p>\n

Couples and families treated<\/p>\n

Mental-health professionals and community representatives who attended lectures by clinic staff<\/p>\n

Institutional partners, including the IDF, the Ministry of Defense Rehabilitation Department, the National Insurance Institute, and resilience centers throughout Israel.<\/p>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1896"}],"version-history":[{"count":50,"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2912,"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1896\/revisions\/2912"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}