Episcopal priests training in traumatology

Dr. Thoburn joined a mental health support team under the leadership of his mentor, Dr. Dennis Guernsey, and journeyed to a village sixty miles outside Kampala, Uganda to work with Episcopal priests in traumatology. From the mid-70s to the mid 80's Uganda suffered tribal war under one tyrant, then another. It was not uncommon for people to be rousted from their vehicles or grabbed by the side of the road, taken into the brush and shot. General Musseveni, a renegade officer of the Obote regime, finally overthrew the dictator with an army of children and brought a level of relative peace. But by then two million people had been killed and nearly everyone left alive had suffered loss and been traumatized.


Dr. John Thoburn teaching about traumatic stress

The team taught the priests how to work with trauma by leading them through healing themselves. The team accompanied the priests to their village churches, worshipped with the village folk and furthered reconciliation in the region through ecumenical meetings of religious leaders. Church leaders, who were relatives, but had never met together, did so for the first time with great success.