Treatment of torture survivors - influences of the exile situation on the course of the traumatic process amd therapeutic possibilities.

Traumatized refugees often suffer from complex posttraumatic disorders with a high tendency of chronicity. This is due to severe and often repeated traumatization in the course of political persecution on one hand and uprooting and ongoing stress caused by leaving their home country and society and living under an adverse situation in exile on the other hand. This article shows how positive and negative factors going along with migration interfere with the course of the traumatic process and the therapeutic possibilities and how the therapeutic process can be adjusted to the situation.