ABSTRACT
South Africa carries one of the world’s most prevalent burdens of disease, HIV. Living surrounded by so much illness and death and against an historical backdrop of violence and poverty, many young people have had multiple exposures to trauma and bereavement with little opportunity to grieve and recover. One of the many tragedies in South Africa is a deficit of parental figures to provide containment, safety and a space for processing complex trauma and complicated grief. At present there are insufficient therapeutic resources to meet the depth and breadth of need. Many of the existing psychosocial practitioners, while facilitating courageous and extraordinary projects, have inadequate training and are often traumatised themselves.
