Mental Health support for violence survivors

''I live with hope and am now surrounded by loving friends around me which makes me happy all the time with no time for stress''. This was the first statement made by Sauda who is a 45 year old South Sudanese refugee widow living at Boroli Settlement of Adjumani during our program followup visit. Having lost her hunband to war in Soutrh Sudan, Sauda ran to Uganda with 4 of her biological children. She also took on the responsibility of caring for 5 of her brothers children since the brother and his wife were killed in South Sudan. The burden of caring for 9 children single handedly became so heavy for Sauda that at some point she considered suicide. 'I used not to sleep because of too much thoughts, I could not eat and even talking to other people was a problem to me'. But since I attended this counseling program in 2017, my life has never been the same. 'I now relate very well with my neigbours and I have forgiven all those who killed my hunsband and brother'. 'Am happy with my children'.

Sauda was one of the 10 group of women who underwent through our group based trauma counseling program in 2017. The group counselling program was conducted for 10 days, each lasting between 2-3 hours.  During the group therapy, topics such as buidling trust, understanding stress (its signs and effects), how to manage personal stress, Forgiveness, etc were handled. After the 10 days, the women were placed in agroup and encouraged to meet regularly so that they can encourage each other. Sauda has found comfort in her group where she is able to confide and share any challenges she faces. Like Sauda, all other members of the group are happy, joyful and live as sisters. They have built a bond among themselves which helps them to support each other.

In our efforts to support humanitarian workers remain psychologically healthy and providing quality services, we recently concluded a 10 weeks training of 10 Humanitarian workers in Katakwi district of Eastern Uganda on self care and basic techniques for supporting individuals with mental health challenges. The 10 weeks training is based on the fact that ''WE ARE ALL WOUNDED HEALERS'' and ''WE CANNNOT GIVE WHAT WE DON'T HAVE''. Majority of NGO staffs have themselves gone through severe traumatic experiences and these experiences shape how they intterect with and support beneficiaries. Its determines their attitude and pervceptions of the people they work with. Equipping them with skills to manage their own day to day stress was very paramount and we witness great healing and restoration in the lives of the 10 staffs who attended the training with many testifying that they were individually struggling with anger, bitterness, resentment, self guilt and anxiety issues. Infact one of the female staff working with RedCross Katakwi said ''I had very negative mind towards men because of the domestic abuse I have gone through in my own marriage and this has affected the way i work wuth men to the extent that I was always unhelpful to men who come to me sharing their problems as I was already biased''. The staffs also learnt basic principles for working with abused adults and children especially in providing psychosocial support.