The National Forum for Services for Survivors of Torture and Trauma is a consortium of individual state and territory organisations whose purpose is to provide treatment and rehabilitation services for refugee torture and trauma survivors. To understand the needs of refugees and those who are survivors of torture, we need to understand the purpose and effects of torture. Torture is not merely used to extract information from an unwilling person. The ultimate goal of Torture and organised violence is to institute and reinforce social and political control. These represent only a few of the methods used.
Torture has no political, religious, cultural, gender, class or age boundaries.
Children, women and men are all targets . The perpetrator can be any person but is usually a representative of the state. The Effects of Torture Torture and trauma have a profound, immediate and long term impact on the physical and psychological health of those who have suffered it. High percentages of torture and trauma survivors suffer from extreme levels of depression and anxiety which manifest in a diversity of forms. These can include, sleep disorders, recurring and intrusive memories, poor self esteem, breakdown in family and personal relationships, intrusion in to the identity development of children and adolescents, physical injuries which require surgery and rehabilitative treatment and many other debilitating consequences.