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Welcome to my personal website & blog!  In addition to my blog articles on various issues, you will find here information on my 30 years of research, as founder and director of DABATEM – Istanbul Center for Behavioral Sciences (formerly the Istanbul Center for Behavior Research and Therapy), into mental health effects of mass traumas, such as wars, torture, and earthquakes, and their effective treatment.

Mass trauma events affect millions of people around the world and lead to a serious mental health problem. Yet, efforts in addressing the mental healthcare needs of survivors have been far from adequate. Effective dealing with this problem requires a mental healthcare model involving interventions that are (1) based on sound theory, (2) proven to be effective, (3) brief, (4) easy to train therapists in their delivery, (5) practicable in different cultures, and (6) suitable for dissemination on a self-help basis. Current trauma treatments do not meet more than two or three of these requirements. The last requirement is particularly important, considering that even the most effective treatment is of limited usefulness in post-disaster settings, if it cannot be delivered widely to survivors because of lack of resources.

Since the early 1990s we have conducted extensive research to develop a psychological treatment (Control-Focused Behavioral Treatment – CFBT), which meets all of the above requirements. CFBT is a brief and largely self-administered intervention that reduces traumatic stress by enhancing sense of control over (or resilience against) traumatic stressors. This was followed by the development of a mental healthcare model that incorporates various brief and innovative field applications of CFBT and treatment delivery strategies that enable cost-effective dissemination of care to masses. While this model so far relates only to earthquake trauma, its basic principles apply to all mass traumas and work is underway to develop a similar model for survivors of war and torture. A recently completed treatment study has shown that CFBT is also highly effective in war and torture trauma. You will find a summary of all this work in this website.

Mass trauma events raise important mental health, human rights, and political issues of concern to mental and public health professionals, social and political scientists, human rights workers, international law experts, policy makers, and governmental and nongovernmental organizations concerned with care of mass trauma survivors. The so-called war on terror in the aftermath of 9/11, invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan by the US and its allies, “extraordinary renditions,” “black sites,” “enhanced interrogation” of detainees, and health professionals’ involvement in torture are among the many issues that generated considerable controversy and concern in the last 20 years. There has been much debate among scholars, as well as in the media and the public on what constitutes torture. There have been arguments that “enhanced interrogation techniques,” such as waterboarding, do not constitute torture. Some have even argued that torture is justifiable in certain circumstances.

An important aspect of my mission has been to inform the world public, media, and professional opinion on such controversial issues. I have argued time and again in my scientific articles, as well as in the media, that any debate on such important issues needs to be informed by science and not by subjective personal opinions or political considerations. My decades of research in this field has led to substantial knowledge that can inform moral, legal, and political judgments and policy decisions on these issues. Although much of this knowledge has been published in scientific journals and books, so far only a relatively small part of it has been made available to the public in an easily understandable non-technical language. Such knowledge stands a chance of having some impact only when shared with the public as widely as possible. This is indeed why this website and blog came into existence. Here I provide evidence-based opinions on these issues in as much lay language as possible. So, regardless of your professional or educational background, if you are searching for informed opinion on these issues, you are at the right address!