Spinning dreams and feelings

The political violence experienced by our country between 1980-1995, has left both material as well as a psychological aftermath. People have suppressed feelings of fear, rage, insecurity and powerlessness. They carry these feelings inside themselves which can sometimes inhibit their imaginative capacity to build creative alternatives, therefore, hindering their ability to face difficult situations.

At the community level, we observed that the social networks of support have deteriorated or cracked; many leaders were imprisoned, disappeared or died. To talk about organization, both in the rural areas and urban areas, was like talking about terrorism. Many communities and organizations were disarticulated and ceased to offer support to their members.

For these reasons, and, due to the dimension of the problem, the scarcity of health professionals in the areas of intervention, and because we expected to reconstruct and/or strengthen the networks of social support, our institution decided to work on mental health through community intervention. In 1992, we initiated the "Child Mental Health Care Program" - PASMI, organizing, training, and following-up Local Teams on Child Mental Health, in Ayacucho, Abancay, Pucallpa, Sicuani, and Tarapoto. These teams, after an organization and training process, select, train and provide follow-up to community promoters, in order for them to work with children's groups in their communities.

Our target population was children because we consider that they were the most affected and vulnerable. However, during the work process, we realized that the local team members were also affected. Consequently, it was necessary to promote the emotional healing of these adults too, as it would not be possible for a person who was affected to be involved in a task of follow up and support of children, if this person had not processed his/her experiences first.

The training and healing process of the local team members has been systematized in the document "Spinning Dreams and Feelings", which summarizes 6 years of PASMI work experience. With this document we would like to contribute to acknowledging the need and importance of working on mental health issues in order to help people in expressing and processing their experiences. Only in this way will forgiveness and reconciliation be possible, enabling the beginning of a real national peacemaking and integral development process; thus, providing a basis so that situations, such as those we have experienced, will not occur again.