The Rehabilitative Pillar
PTSD
Post-traumatic stress disorder may cause the person suffering from it great and lasting harm and greatly impair the quality of life, daily functioning, and livelihood.
Our Approach
Ruca’s Farm will maintain a group treatment program under the guidance of therapists and researchers who are leaders in the field of treatment of PTSD. The treatment will be planned and coordinated by a professional therapeutic director, and the success of the program will be assessed regularly based on evaluation of data.
Our method comes to answer some of the social and personal needs required for rehabilitation from PTSD. Research has demonstrated that treatment combining work in nature and agricultural cultivation can increase mood, reduce loneliness, improve physical condition, raise the effectiveness of drug treatment, and contribute significantly to the future success of those suffering from the severe effects of PTSD.
The participants will be integrated into a three-stage, year-long daily program of productive, outdoor agricultural work alongside group formation and support activities.
Relying on accumulated professional knowledge on the subject, we believe that running a long-term structured treatment program¬—combined with productive soil work in an open and contained place—can provide physical, neurological, and psychological rehabilitation while improving motor skills and daily functioning of the participants.
PTSD Among IDF Veterans
Soldiers who witness serious injury or death in the course of their military service will oftentimes be traumatized by the experience. Usually, these soldiers will sufferfrom acute stress syndrome for a relatively brief period and be able to heal.
However, in many of cases the condition can deteriorate into a severe chronic, functional, and behavioral mental disorder, known commonly as post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
In Israel, due to its unique security situation, the problem is particularly severe and within a population of 9 million there are estimated to be over 58,000 former security force veterans suffering from PTSD.
Why should I participate?
- I have a reason to get up in the morning—a meaning and mission that I connect with.
- I want to feel that I’m doing something productive.
- A sense of belonging and a good social connection to the group is important to me (belonging and belonging to the group).
- I am happy to participate in a training program for entering the labor market, and to belong and contribute to society.
- Closeness to the land and its farming that provide positive physical and psychological benefits.
- I would like to prove my capacity to earn a living and want to be paid for my work on the farm.
- I am surrounded by people who have gone through similar experiences and whom I hope I can connect with and trust.
- I am treated by people who understand me and whom I can trust, and have confidence in the plan they offer and the clear, simple, and effective tools they will give me.
- I want to feel that I have visibility—that I am seen as a person with individual wants and needs.
- I want to feel that I am in a safe place.
