2015-2016 Healing Accomplishments

Our Healing programs provide survivors and those who care for them with improved access to healing techniques and wellness practices that are holistic—addressing the physical, emotional, and spiritual effects of trauma. Through our healing programs, we seek to increase society’s understanding of the effects of trauma and expand the use of integrated, trauma-informed wellness practices by the field to improve the response to and care for survivors.

This year we reached more than 2,000 survivors and healing professionals through our retreat programs and workshops.

Providing a Bridge to Services and Support

As sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse—and Joyful Heart—continue to garner significant attention, more and more people are turning to us for resources. Survivors are referred to us through the Internet, social media, partner organizations, board members and more. In response, we provide support over the phone and through email, and connect survivors with other organizations for direct services. This fiscal year, we successfully bridged close to 1,600 people to resources, a 15 percent increase over last year. We are proud to know that every survivor who reaches out to us receives a compassionate response and a bridge to the resources they need.

Innovating Healing through the Survivor Retreat Research Project

Since 2015, we have worked closely with researcher Mary Ann Dutton of Georgetown University and her team on our Holistic Healing Arts Retreat research study to evaluate our Retreat Model. The intent of this evaluation has been to assess the effectiveness of the retreat model as well as how it compares to mainstream services. This year, we successfully completed the second and third retreats as part of the Holistic Healing Arts Retreat research study, with the final study retreat scheduled for early fiscal year 2017. Preliminary findings to date are promising, showing:

• Greater increase in psychological flexibility, non-judgment, and non-reactivity
• Greater increase in coping self-efficacy
• Greater decrease in posttraumatic symptoms, depression, and insomnia


The implications of these findings suggest that this four-day retreat model is effective and beneficial to its participants.

In December 2015, Joyful Heart participated in and presented our Holistic Healing Arts Retreat research project at the Chapman Foundation Retreat, conducted in partnership with Columbia University. The retreat brought together thought leaders in the domestic violence field to discuss how to better integrate psychology and psychiatry into the service offerings for domestic violence survivors.

Supporting the Healing Community in Hawai’i

In Hawai‘i, through a project funded by the Atherton Family Foundation, 258 people from local organizations received Heal the Healers workshops. This project is a two-year effort to assist local organizations in developing and implementing a repertoire of practices, policies, and procedures that address vicarious trauma to facilitate and sustain an environment of health and well-being for their staff.

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