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Twenty years post-genocide: the creation of mental health competence among Rwandan survivors through community-based healing workshops

Mahr, Ines-Lena and Campbell, Catherine (2016) Twenty years post-genocide: the creation of mental health competence among Rwandan survivors through community-based healing workshops. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 26 (4). pp. 291-306. ISSN 1052-9284

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Identification Number: 10.1002/casp.2263

Abstract

Twenty years after the genocide, many Rwandans still suffer from the psychological wounds of the past. The country's mental health agenda is based on individualised and psychiatric approaches that help some but cannot be provided on a large scale. Further, many reconciliation initiatives have been based on public testimonies, which have been shown to be potentially re-traumatising, leading to calls for small-scale community-based approaches to healing, which constitute a middle way between individualised and public approaches. Drawing on the concept of ‘mental health competence’ (Campbell and Burgess, 2012), this study evaluates one such approach: the Life Wounds Healing workshops offered by the African Institute for Integral Psychology. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with former workshop participants, staff members and the institute's founder to investigate their views on how these workshops can help genocide survivors. The results suggest that the workshops succeed in creating mental health competence by establishing a safe social space for people to open up, increasing people's critical understandings of the processes of pain — and potential for healing — that informs behaviour change, generating bonding social capital and offering participants' income-generating possibilities.

Item Type: Article
Official URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(IS...
Additional Information: © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Divisions: Social Policy
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology
Date Deposited: 08 Jan 2016 10:32
Last Modified: 26 Sep 2024 06:12
URI: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/64880

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