The International Trauma Treatment Program (ITTP) is a community-supported not-for-profit organization in Olympia, Washington that enhances practitioners’ ability to treat complex trauma resulting from torture, war, and natural disasters. ITTP seeks to restore survivors’ physical and psychological health through treatment and education.

ITTP collaborates with local practitioners living in areas affected by complex trauma  to identify and to develop culturally appropriate treatment. These practitioners then assist colleagues in their home countries to do the same, thus greatly increasing the number of practitioners who are able to counteract the effects of complex trauma.

As increasing numbers of practitioners worldwide develop evermore highly effective treatments for complex trauma, those who seek to debilitate entire populations through war and torture are undermined. Consequently, ITTP addresses the root causes of complex trauma while improving methods for its treatment.

Our approach to trauma treatment

can be summarized with reference
to the popular adage about fishing:

“Give a man a fish and he eats for a day;
Teach a man to fish and he eats for life.”

We go one step further:

“You’ve been fishing here for thousands of years.
You know better how to fish sustainably than we do.
But if we both describe how we fish, we may discover
ways to improve what we do.”

Thus, we collaborate rather than indoctrinate.

As every culture treats trauma, our goal is to improve
what already exists, rather than to impose Western ideas
on other cultures. Thus, we seek to establish
an international network of practitioners
who share ideas about how best to develop

indigenous treatments for trauma.