(Illustration by iStock/Kubkoo)
Eugenia Ponce clearly recalls the tragic day in 2013 when her nephew and 12 other community members were disappeared. In the 10 years since, she has led a local collective in her native Tepito neighborhood in Mexico City to advocate for justice on their behalf. Along with thousands of other families of disappeared people, Ponce is a member of a national movement responding to violence that all too frequently goes unacknowledged and unaddressed.
The insidiousness of violence wreaks havoc in the lives of both its firsthand victims and their family, friends, and communities. Sometimes it is perpetuated in the form of retribution; other times its effects are internalized in the form of lasting trauma, burnout, and illness. For Ponce, it has caused utter exhaustion. “No one is prepared for something like this,” she says. “Somewhere along the way, you realize you just can’t go on. You might know what the next step is, but physically and emotionally, you can’t anymore.”
Ponce is among countless people in Latin America grappling with the aftermath of violence against a loved one. Countless more have experienced violence themselves. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Latin America has seen a rise in homicide rates, which were already among the highest in the world. The increased violence has driven massive waves of internal migration and emigration as families seek to escape horrific realities beyond their control.
What will it take to break cycles of violence and promote peace? What are some of the building blocks to overcome entrenched patterns and narratives to find life in its aftermath? Through our work at Brio and at Glasswing, we have witnessed the power of integrating mental health support, awareness, and skill-building to help individuals and communities experience healing and liberation—even in the presence of trauma and grief. We have witnessed the way mental health makes it possible for survivors of violence to experience restoration and agency. It helps young people living in adverse environments learn to relate to each other—and themselves—in more gentle and compassionate ways. It creates systems and structures that respond to the effects of violence with greater understanding and empathy, breaking the vicious cycle.
Mental health is a primary building block to cultivating pathways of peace where violence has been the dominant narrative. It makes collective healing possible, and tells a new story about who we really are.
Peace Begins With How We Relate to Our Own Experiences
Years into her advocacy, Ponce joined a program designed specifically to help activists and families of disappeared people address the impact of their painful experiences in a holistic way. Hosted by Casa Xitla, a collective of artists, health-care workers, and activists in Mexico City, the program features weeklong residentials for participants from various parts of Mexico to care for their pressing mental health and well-being needs. Beginning with the basics, participants are prompted to examine their own physical health—and learn simple techniques to build habits around sleep, nutrition, and physical movement. Participants try these new practices during the residential, and then the program continues virtually over the course of four months to help them continue their new habits and to support the health of their local collective of peers.
To further integrate mental health into the human rights movement, and to help participants strengthen their mental well-being, Brio partnered with Casa Xitla to design program activities cultivating psychological skills. Taught through experiential conversations and reflections, these skills allow participants to relate to their experiences with openness rather than resistance, making it possible to move toward personal and collective values. Many of these mental processes are codified in the framework of Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT), an evidence-based psychological intervention that helps build new responses to life’s hardships. The primary goal of ACT is to build psychological flexibility.
One ACT skill that participants learn is present moment awareness: cultivating thought and emotion awareness, along with body awareness, to fully engage the present moment and acknowledge its possibilities. One participant shared, “I learned how to notice my thoughts and feelings, and what to do with them. I learned how to care for myself. It was as if I was living under a shadow, and I came to discover that there were so many colors and so much light.”
Another skill is acceptance: adopting a willing posture toward the wholeness of one’s experience, even the painful ones. Acceptance addresses our innate tendency to fight, avoid, or control our pain, which tends to compound our suffering and get us stuck. “I realized I could not continue living in worry, in a depression, because my brother never came back. I discovered that there is more life to be lived, and while I will always feel the pain of his absence, I can live with that,” another participant said.
A third skill participants develop is committed action: the identification and enactment of values-aligned choices in the presence of ongoing hardship. In particular, participants find solidarity through mutual accompaniment and support. No longer alone in their journey of healing in the midst of advocacy, they are able to bond in their commitment to resisting self-exploitation as a solution to violence. “We know that we can accomplish so much together, embracing each other in our pain, in our rage, in our hope,” said one seasoned participant. After decades of fighting for justice, this was the first time she had slowed down—and found it transformative.
It is common to think of violence as an external reality, but all too often the struggle becomes internal: a mental and emotional tug-of-war that we cannot win. Peace begins when we drop the rope and accept the fullness of our lived experience, even the parts we would rather erase. By accompanying others in this process, we can find meaning and purpose in the presence of adversity.
Structured Support Is a Refuge for Experiencing Interpersonal Peace
Growing up in contexts where criminal gangs vie for control, many adolescents turn to toughness or withdrawal for survival. While their conduct and demeanor are natural responses to adverse environments, they can in turn lead to interpersonal aggression and risky behavior. Therefore, to cultivate peace at the community level, it must first be fostered between individuals by shifting the way they relate to each other.
In Medellín, Colombia, where Brio’s partner Amadeus Fundación offers music programs to develop emotional intelligence and well-being, young people who have been through difficult life experiences often use self-protective strategies to defend against feelings of vulnerability. Many students join the program having experienced trauma firsthand, in the context of their home or their neighborhood. They are accustomed to a way of relating that is guarded—offensive, distant, and at times violent.
In order to help young people expand their repertoire of behavior, Amadeus’ teachers and staff dedicate themselves to creating new relational experiences that are structured and supportive. They model compassion, empathy, and discipline in response to participants, rather than reacting angrily as the participants might expect. Through didactic mentorship, clear expectations, and emotional skill-building, Amadeus creates an environment in which young people can try new ways of interacting with each other that promote connectedness rather than animosity.
This type of social support not only cultivates softness in place of toughness, but also begins to break the vicious cycles of violence that tend to entrap those who perceive no other way forward. By building a culture and set of norms based on deeply-held communal values, Amadeus offers an alternate context in which a peace-promoting disposition yields positive responses. It is a safe environment for young people to experiment with ways of interacting that are different from those of the streets: kindness, generosity, solidarity, gentleness.
For adolescents like Juan Miguel (name changed for privacy), the transformation is palpable. When he first joined the program at age 10, Juan Miguel was withdrawn and disengaged—a common response to contexts that are violent or unpredictable. Yet even though it was difficult for him at first, Juan Miguel liked being at Amadeus. There was something different about the way he was treated; the teachers and staff were patient and kind, even when it was difficult for him to speak to them. By learning an instrument and playing in the orchestra, Juan Miguel developed a skill alongside other young people that he could be proud of. His ability to play the violin was his own; no one could take it away from him.
Now, six years later, Juan Miguel brings an expressive, gentle energy with him into every room. He nurtures younger students who arrive at the program, and is one of the mentors in the orchestra. Juan Miguel’s mother is also supportive of his participation. She sees how he has changed and values the universally applicable life skills he has learned.
Providing a structured environment as a refuge from the ways of the streets is a starting point for young people to practice peacefully relating with themselves and each other. Yet these behaviors do not stay within the refuge; they extend back into the community, as participants begin to relate with friends and family members in newfound ways. As their numbers grow, they offer glimpses of possibility to their peers—demonstrating that interpersonal peace is achievable, even in contexts fraught with violence.
Mental Health-Informed Systems Foster Peacebuilding
In many systematically under-resourced communities, frontline workers within public institutions are not only exposed to extreme adversity, but also ill-equipped to manage stress and trauma in themselves and, consequently, among those they serve. Science tells us that the stress and trauma that can result from chronic exposure to violence keeps us in a survival-driven mindset, which can undermine our ability to think critically, make decisions, regulate our emotions and behaviors, and connect with others. This can result in quick stereotype-driven decision-making which might result in aggression or victimization.
Glasswing is an organization founded in El Salvador that works in some of the most violence-affected communities across 12 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as with migrant youth in New York City. Glasswing works with youth, teachers, health-care workers, law enforcement, and child protection workers, to create trauma-informed spaces that foster healing and resilience, that ultimately enable kids and communities to thrive.
Glasswing's mental health approach, coined SanaMente (healthy mind), focuses on helping workers in public institutions understand and recognize the impact of stress and trauma on themselves, their peers, and on the communities they serve. They also develop the skills to manage and reduce symptoms of stress and trauma, consequently mitigating risk and harm. In communities where so many people have witnessed or survived violence, this kind of training can be key to fostering healing and resilience.
A female police officer in Guatemala who was trained by Glasswing, explains: “We leave the precinct and we never know if we will return dead or alive. Over time, the stress, workload and our responsibilities take a toll on us… Today, we provide a more dignified, more humane, more just, and less aggressive service. We worry about the needs of others, about doing our job better, and all of this is a result of us taking better care of our own mental health." Officers are also taught to recognize when others are experiencing trauma. For instance, they learn to make a survivor feel safe before taking a report of what happened.
Glasswing’s training reaches workforces across public systems that interact with communities directly, including teachers, doctors, nurses, and child protection officials. “The most significant change I have had after the training has been learning to manage stress, which is an important baseline for everything we do. When we are stressed, we are not able to think clearly,” acknowledged a teacher in Guatemala. A health-care professional in El Salvador explained that sometimes being overwhelmed with work can make it hard to do your best in helping people recover: "Part of what one needs is to be easier on oneself—understanding that listening and supporting someone takes emotional time and energy.” After all, one cannot pour from an empty cup.
The SanaMente curriculum uses storytelling to explain the science of stress and trauma—that humans have adapted to survive in highly threatening environments. Participants learn that biological processes trigger our fight-flight-freeze stress response which helps us react quickly to threats and increases our chances of survival. In modern times this can sometimes have the unintended impact of causing undue strain and further harm. To mitigate these risks, SanaMente equips individuals with skills to manage stress so that they are less likely to add to the burden of stress and trauma for both individuals and institutions.
Another essential aspect of SanaMente is that the curriculum is offered to every employee at participating public institutions. In learning together, they develop a shared understanding and a common language about mental health, promoting greater social cohesion and hope while reducing isolation, stigma, and judgment. As public systems become saturated at all levels with these skills, they can better contribute to institutional and community healing and resilience. They can then become even more compassionate, effective, and just.
Join the Mental Health Ecosystem and Participate in Our Collective Healing
Effective violence prevention and peacebuilding require thinking more broadly and creatively at the individual, communal, and systems levels. We can address the root cause by helping individuals and communities better navigate difficult inner experiences, while transforming systems and structures to support healing. Taking a public health approach that includes the whole population can strengthen the powerful processes that encompass traditional peacebuilding. In addition to the examples we have shared in this article, models such as The Friendship Bench in Zimbabwe, CorStone in India, and BasicNeeds in Kenya demonstrate effective mental health interventions with active stakeholder participation.
To truly integrate mental health perspectives and practices to build peace, we need collective action. We have heard from many social sector leaders that mental health is of great need and priority, but it can be difficult to know where to start. Our vision is for all of us to join the mental health ecosystem, beginning with the following steps and moving toward greater committed action.
Shift the narrative. All too often, violence and reactions to violence are attributed to individual moral failing. Many of us are now familiar with the idea of being trauma-informed and understand that stressful and traumatic events have a powerful influence on how we think, feel, and interact with others. This could shift not just our understanding, but also our response. For instance, instead of focusing on the behavior of “the angry bad person,” we begin to see the behavior as a cue that this person is suffering and needs help. Research is telling us that our anger, our fear, and our difficulties trusting and connecting to others are normal and expected consequences of stressful and traumatic events, and that much of the time, we are unaware, or unable to control our responses. Research is also telling us that we can grow our awareness, develop strategies to cope and manage symptoms, and build social networks that provide safety and support, and more importantly, reduce instances of victimization.
So, a way to reduce judgment and shift paradigms is to raise awareness and engender a more widespread understanding that our biological responses to stress and threats are not manifestations of who we are but rather a consequence of our life experiences, our environment, and stimuli (both past and present). Another important strategy is to equip citizens with the knowledge and skills (through psychoeducation), and foster a sense of agency, so they can become active participants in building an ecosystem that is more conducive to healing and resilience.
Reflect together. Building a mental health ecosystem begins with becoming aware of what might be happening in our places of work—among team members and community members. Questions to consider with your team:
- Are people on your team already talking about the impact of stress?
- What training, workshops, or spaces for reflection are already available?
- How might you engage your peers in conversations about how to enhance psychological safety at work?
- What narratives already exist in your organization’s and communities’ culture around mental health and well-being? Which narratives are most helpful?
Learn and support your own growth. There are many resources available to begin learning about mental health and the power of collective healing. We have selected a few for you as a starting point.
- Learn the basics of stress response and key protective factors can help teams, participants, and communities move through stress: Understanding the stress response.
- Discover 50 common signs and symptoms of stress to become more aware of how stress may be affecting you, colleagues, and community members: Stress effects.
- Read one of the preeminent resources on traumatic stress and various forms of useful interventions, including ones that can be implemented programmatically outside of clinical settings: The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.
- Participate in basic training on how to support survivors and connect them to resources in the wake of disaster: Psychological First Aid Training.
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Read more stories by Celina De Sola & Daisy Rosales.