History

Created by Foundation Child and ICACAPAP (International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions), the group held the first meeting in Berlin (Italian Embassy) in 2004. The Congress goal was the definition of the first joint projects among Israeli and Palestinian professionals. To make it possible, the work program foresaw moments of reflection on theoretical and intervention models and experience and background sharing moments: everything with the purpose of supporting an exchange and confrontation atmosphere not only on professional level.

In the second meeting, that took place at Erice (Sicily, Italy) in 2005, the group adopted the name E.R.I.C.E., not only in honour of the name of the place but also as acronyms of the common goal (Empowerment and Resilience in Children Everywhere), which is promoting the rights of children and bring them back to a normal life through the necessary cares, everywhere they live and apart from their citizenship. From here Foundation Child decided to fund other projects, to extend them, gradually, to all Israeli and Palestinian people.

In 2006 the group had a new meeting in Rome to discuss the first results came out from researches. The picture of the situation was really worrying: researches underlined that children exposed to conflict – Israeli, Palestinian or Arabic-Israeli – presented a severe compromising of their psychological wellbeing. As demonstrated by Ruth Feldman, expert of the group, even if a relatively low number of children involved in the research had developed a real Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, 70 % of Israeli and Palestinian children in prescholar age (until 7 years old) presented aggressiveness, sleep disorders, anxiety and alimentary disturb. These are not always recognized, and even if they are individuated they are not adequately treated and become chronicle.

In 2007 the group met again in Florence (Italy) during the XIII European Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (ESCAP) congress. In that occasion the results of the researches done by ERICE group was presented to the international public of child psychiatrist through a big symposium.