The Community-Based Approach

The community-based approach to trauma healing works to mobilize the healing resources already present in communities to help those who are suffering. It integrates modern mental health care practices with traditional forms of healing, economic self-help projects, spiritual expression, nonviolent conflict transformation and other activities such as storytelling and play that bring people together at the same time they bring about healing. Like the cast on a broken limb, these activities provide support for broken souls and broken communities, so that the wounds can properly heal themselves.

Community trauma healing is based upon the premises that as humans we are:

• Social beings who can help each other heal and reknit the social fabric of communities torn by trauma and violence.
• Physical beings with the natural ability to release fight-flight-freeze brain and body responses in ways that transform trauma.
• Meaning-making beings with the capacity to explore root causes of tragic events and seek justice in ways that build understanding and restore relationships.
• Spiritual beings capable of transcending threats and reducing conflicts that cause trauma through responses that are neither passive nor violent.

This approach was pioneered in developing countries like India that do not have well-established systems of individualized mental health care and put into widespread practice in regions such as South Africa and the Balkans that have been plagued by violence. It has proven equally effective in helping people in developed countries heal from trauma and stress – for example, in the United States after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and after Hurricane Katrina.

Certain broad principles pertain in all community trauma healing programs – building community, making people safe, giving people tools to help themselves and so on. These build upon the healing processes described above. However, the specific methods are flexible and vary widely, depending upon the special needs and resources of particular communities.

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