{"id":130771,"date":"2017-10-25T10:09:51","date_gmt":"2017-10-25T14:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=130771"},"modified":"2017-10-25T10:09:51","modified_gmt":"2017-10-25T14:09:51","slug":"resilience-face-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2017\/10\/resilience-face-evil\/","title":{"rendered":"Resilience in the Face of Evil"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Megan<\/a>
Megan Berthold, associate professor and director of field education, at the School of Social Work in Hartford. (Peter Morenus\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

UConn professor Megan Berthold was a clinical social worker in California, working with survivors of torture from many countries including those who survived the Cambodian genocide, when a judge in federal immigration court reached the limit of endurance.<\/p>\n

Berthold had psychologically evaluated a genocide survivor from Cambodia who was seeking asylum in the United States, and had prepared a detailed report on the torture and other traumas the person had suffered, as well as the psychological impact of those experiences. But when Berthold took the stand to testify as an expert witness, the judge said she didn\u2019t want to hear any more about the trauma: she had read the report, and that was enough.<\/p>\n

But the judge did have a question for Berthold: How was she able to do her job without breaking?<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, your honor, I have the opportunity to work with these survivors over a long period of time while you only hear about the persecution, the trauma, the harm,\u201d Berthold remembers. \u201cI hear that too, of course, but I also witness their many moments of strength, the things that are going well in their lives, and I see people \u2013 sometimes over many years \u2013 get better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two weeks later, the judge resigned as an immigration judge. But Berthold is still on the job.<\/p>\n

\n

We\u2019re not just looking at problems, but also at individual and community and societal strengths. — Megan Berthold<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Now an associate professor and director of field education at the UConn School of Social Work, Berthold has spent decades assisting refugees, asylum seekers, and others traumatized by torture and persecution. At UConn, she not only trains social workers of the future in this difficult and sensitive work, but also studies ways in which social workers themselves \u2013 along with interpreters, health and mental health professionals, lawyers, and yes, immigration judges \u2013 can overcome the secondhand trauma that can afflict those who help the primary victims.<\/p>\n

Berthold\u2019s work is part of UConn\u2019s established and growing commitment to the field of human rights, which can be seen everywhere from the Human Rights Institute at the University to regular academic programming that highlights areas of local, national, and global concern.<\/p>\n

One of the most prominent showcases of that commitment is the biennial Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights, which will be presented on Nov. 2 to Physicians for Human Rights, which uses forensic science, clinical medicine, and public health research to document crimes against humanity around the world, as well as train health professionals to investigate and prevent human rights violations.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s recipient corresponds well with Berthold\u2019s work in more ways than one: not only has she been at the intersection of health professions and survivors of torture her entire career, but she is also serving on the advisory board of a new chapter of PHR that has been formed by medical students at UConn Health.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got to know PHR many years ago, when I was working with survivors of torture in Los Angeles,\u201d Berthold says. \u201cThey do a tremendous amount of good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Serving on an advisory board for a medical school group while holding an appointment in a different college might seem odd to some, but for Berthold such cross-disciplinary approaches are second nature \u2013 and, she says, essential to the field of human rights.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s been my approach for my whole career,\u201d she says. \u201cBecause of the nature of what happens to survivors of torture and persecution, if you\u2019re going to be effective in helping them, you have to work as part of a team.\u201d<\/p>\n

A good example of that approach is the UConn Schools of Law and Social Work Immigration Detention Service Project at York County Prison in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

Spearheaded by Berthold and Human Rights Institute director Kathryn Libal on the social work side and Anna Cabot and Jon Bauer from the School of Law, the alternative spring break project takes students to an immigration detention center in Pennsylvania where they assist asylum seekers in preparing their cases.<\/p>\n

The program \u2013 which last year received the Pennsylvania Immigration Resource Center\u2019s Light of Liberty Award \u2013 has already grown to incorporate students and faculty members from other disciplines as well, including El Instituto.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe collaboration between Law and Social Work has been tremendously fruitful for this project,\u201d says Bauer, who also directs the Law School\u2019s Asylum and Human Rights Clinic and is on the advisory board of the PHR chapter at the medical school.<\/p>\n

Bauer singles out Berthold\u2019s efforts in preparing mental health evaluations as part of the program, which helped lead to some asylum seekers being released from detention.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer work on traumatized refugees and asylum seekers is tremendously important, both in her field and in terms of immediate practical application,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Berthold\u2019s concern doesn\u2019t end with those seeking asylum, though. A major part of her research and practice has focused on the areas of vicarious trauma and vicarious resilience, which affect those providing assistance to survivors of torture and other traumas. Neither of these concepts were well established when she began as a social worker, but thanks in part to her efforts, they\u2019ve become widely accepted in the field.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of the reason I am still doing this work 30 years later, is that I\u2019ve learned how people who survived these human rights violations and other kinds of horrible human-perpetrated trauma also have enormous strength and resilience. That gives me perspective and makes me vicariously resilient,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s something I really appreciate about the work we do: we\u2019re not just looking at problems, but also at individual and community and societal strengths.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Social work professor Megan Berthold says people who survive human rights violations and trauma often have enormous strength and resilience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":130773,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1715,88,1870,92],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1902],"class_list":["post-130771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-impact","category-global-affairs","category-ssw","category-uconn-hartford"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-21 09:05:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130771"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130774,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130771\/revisions\/130774"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/130773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130771"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=130771"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=130771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}