ICEEFT Position on the US government practice of separating migrant and asylum-seeking families at the U.S.-Mexico border

 

June 2018

The International Centre for Emotionally Focused Therapy (ICEEFT) is an international professional organization of mental health professionals with thousands of therapists in the US and across the globe providing clinical services to adults, children, couples and families.

It is with shock and outrage that the International Center for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy takes a stand against the current policy of the U.S. government to separate children from their families at its southern border. The research which informs our practice of family and couple therapy makes clear in no uncertain terms that prolonged separation of children from their parents has traumatic repercussions, both short and long term, making this an unconscionable act of cruelty. Depending on the age, such separations are known to have a deleterious impact on the emotional, physical and social development of the child creating a lifetime of impairment, not to mention the devastating heartbreak for the parents. Neither parents nor children know when or whether they will be reunited with one another, an uncertainty which has profound psychological repercussions.  Compounding the horror is the fact that, according to recent reports, the caretakers in charge are forbidden from physically comforting these children in distress.

- Zoya Simakhodskaya, Elana Katz, Sam Jinich, Robert Allen and Jill Fischer

STATEMENT AGAINST WHITE SUPREMACY

August 2017

Since our inception in 2010, NYCEFT has been committed to creating safe secure bonds in couples and families, and as part of that commitment we feel a responsibility to stand against the message of hate and white supremacy advanced by the protests that took place in Charlottesville on the weekend of Aug. 11.

We are grateful for the courage of those who risked their lives to protest this hatred and we mourn as a community the death of Heather Heyer and pray for the full recovery of those injured and emotionally impacted by the events of this weekend. We know that many of our clients and members of our community have grown up as targets of many different types of oppression and experience the increase in hate crimes around the country as reopening of old wounds. 

We stand committed to helping our clients and our colleagues stand together for healing, strength and protection, and we pray for a society that attends to its most vulnerable, in our belief that this is what creates a safe and thriving community for all.