How to Improve Well-being From Trauma Using Global MentalHealth Approaches.

M Reza Rifki
May 1
2 min read

How to Improve Well-being From Trauma Using Global MentalHealth Approaches

🔹 1. Community-Based Psychosocial Support (CB-PSS)

Empower local structures (e.g., pesantren, village leaders, youth groups) to provide non-clinical mental health support.
Train community members in basic psychological first aid (PFA), stress management, and active listening.
Organize safe communal spaces for storytelling, art, and collective healing (e.g., wayang, Islamic cultural events).

✔️ Cultural resilience is often embedded in rituals, religious life, and collective memory. Use those strengths.

🔹 2. Integrate Mental Health into Primary Health Care

Equip puskesmas (community health clinics) with mental health-trained general practitioners or nurses.
Implement WHO’s mhGAP Intervention Guide, which helps non-specialists detect and manage depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc.
Ensure services are affordable, confidential, and non-stigmatizing.

✔️ Bringing services closer reduces stigma and improves access, especially in rural Banten.

🔹 3. Address Spiritual and Cultural Dimensions of Healing

Collaborate with kyai, ustadz, and Islamic teachers to deliver psychoeducation that aligns with religious values and teachings (e.g., patience, forgiveness, gratitude).
Encourage faith-based coping and reflection, while discouraging harmful fatalism or stigma.

✔️ Many people in Banten seek healing through religion—this should be respected and included, not ignored.

🔹 4. Youth and Education-Based Interventions

Integrate social-emotional learning (SEL) into schools and pesantren.
Offer peer counseling, life skills training, and trauma awareness for youth.
Support teachers to recognize trauma symptoms and respond with empathy.

✔️ Post-traumatic growth can be nurtured in young people through resilience-building education.

🔹 5. Narrative & Memory Work

Create platforms for oral history, theater, local film, or photo exhibits that allow communities to reclaim their histories without shame.
Promote collective storytelling to reshape identity from victimhood to survival and resilience.

✔️ Healing often requires not forgetting—but reframing.

🔹 6. Reduce Structural Drivers of Distress

Tackle poverty, exclusion, and discrimination through inclusive development.
Invest in rural infrastructure, education, and jobs, particularly for youth and women.
Combine mental health programs with livelihood and social protection schemes.

✔️ Mental health is not just about the mind—it’s deeply tied to justice and opportunity.

🔹 7. Monitoring and Research

Support community-based participatory research (CBPR) to measure well-being, local idioms of distress, and treatment preferences.
Involve local universities (e.g., UNTIRTA, UIN Banten) to study and co-develop trauma-informed programs.

✔️ “Nothing about us without us” – communities must lead and own their healing.

🔚 Final Thought:

The trauma of marginalization, stigma, and past violence in Banten can be healed—not erased—through sustained, respectful, and inclusive mental health efforts. Global Mental Health gives us the tools, but it must be grounded in local wisdom and community ownership.

Would you like help drafting a community project proposal or program outline based on these approaches?