Mental Health for All

Varias prácticas alternativas en salud mental comuniaria, vienen siendo realizadas en João Pessoa (PB), Ceará y otros Estados de Brasil. Terapia Comunitaria, Experiencia Somática, Reiki, empoderan personas de comunidades pobres, distribuyendo hacia abajo los recursos de la tecnología de la salud. Por Rolando Lazarte.

key words: Mental Health, Communitarian Therapy, João Pessoa, Ceará, Nordeste, Brasil

Since 2001, the team formed by Maria Filha, Maria Djair Dias, Ana Vigarani and Ana Maria Cavalcante Lopes, have been working hard to return to many people in the surroundings of João Pessoa self-steem, sense of belonging, positive self-image.

In many steps of these walk, Maria Teresa Chimento, Ernúbia Rufino, Antonio de Pádua Quirino Ramalho and other people from helth services of the basic attention from Cabedelo and the capital of Paraba, joined to the germinal team.

In 2001, Ana Vigarani inspired meetings with health workers of the municipality of Cabedelo so as to be sensitive to human suffering. Music, dance, collettive instants of meditation, were developed at Cabedelo Clube.

Ernúbia Rufino and Antonio de Pádua Quirino Ramalho, psichologist and social medicin-sanitarist, were at the time in the head of this ant work to contribute to develop basic feelings of belongin to a population devastated.

Maria Teresa Chimento lead at May 1st an inforgottable journey with policemen of the district so as to massage each other and meditate in chakras and feel their inner máster among cellebration of the worl day of workers.

Sister Ana Vigarani has been accompanying Antônio Fragoso da Costa, former bishop from Peoples Catholic Church at Crateús (Ceará) along more than 40 years. Dom Fragoso, as was known, death in 2006.

I this time, her joined Adalberto de Paula Barreto, founder of Communitarian Therapy, a way of retrieving collective and individual sense of meaning among --initially--peripherian people of the capital of Ceará, Fortaleza.

This social work of empowerment growed up in the last 21 years, and now is spread all Brazil long, as a social policy of the Ministry od Health so as to diminishing mental suffering of vaste number of individuals and communities.

In this work, the team leaded by Maria Filha gathered partners as Sister Euphrasia Nyaki, known as Efu, a tanzanian from Maryknoll Sisters Mission, which maintains AFYA-Centro Holístico e Saúde da Mulher at Alto do Mateus.

There, Lourdes, Vanda, Rosa, Giovana, Vera, Maria Ventura, Maria José, learned reiki, massotherapy, fitotherapy, organic farming, and a way of caring people which includes somatic experience and familiar constellation.

Somatic experience is a biologically non-argumentative therapy for traumatized people overcome the marks of what happended. Familiar Constellation is also a non-intellectual kind of psichosociodrama which liberate energy prisons.

Now these complementary therapies are spreading to the neighborhood of cities as Campina Grande (PB) and Salvador (BA), in the Northeast of Brazil. More people from many different social classes are learning how to health by himselves.

Pan-American Health Organization has being supporting nurse chief in these actions, which are being supported in the local places by institutions as Universidad de la República del Uruguay and ENEO-México.

In the beginning of 2009, Communtarian Therapy is reaching Argentina, where some nurses have alredy being practising in Posadas (Misiones) and Córdoba. Faculty of Sociology (UNCuyo) at Mendoza has shown interest in the issue.

Maybe it is time to remind that Argentina suffered a terrible coup in mental health of his population between (at least) 1955 and 1983, with state terrorism threading vaste nets of persons which need to be rescued.