Local therapy to heal the trauma of war

As the peace process begins to take root in Angola, displaced communities have turned to indigenous forms of therapy as a way of dealing with the psychological scars left behind by nearly three decades of civil war. A recent report in the international medical journal, The Lancet, found that most people turned to their communities for 'conselho', meaning advice or consolation. Encouragement was given to people to abandon the thoughts and memories of war and loss. According to the UN Children's Fund, about one million Angolan children have lost one parent in the war, and almost 300,000 have lost both parents. More than 66 percent had watched as family or community members were tortured or killed. The study titled 'Conselho: Psychological Healing in Displaced Communities in Angola', focused on displaced people living in the town of Lubango, in the southern province of Huila, and in two government-run camps (Visaka and Chipopia) in surrounding rural areas, each housing around 8,000 people. 'Conselho' was given by family members, neighbours and church groups and had three main themes, the report said. Firstly, that death is natural and inevitable. "Bereaved people are encouraged to deal with their pain by seeing death as part of life's cycle, and to derive comfort from the knowledge that they are not suffering alone," the report said. Secondly, central to comforting those who had suffered tremendous loss was that "strength could be drawn from the fact that suffering is a shared experience". Finally, 'conselho' encouraged survivors to take responsibility for themselves and their family. "Widows and widowers were encouraged to marry again soon, and women of childbearing age who had lost children were advised to become pregnant again," the report said. The report said that "such advice does not form part of a western psychosocial counselling approach, since giving advice is seen as contrary to allowing patients to develop their own solutions". The report challenged the appropriateness of western counselling approaches. It argued against its universality and suggested that trauma and healing in Angola was more culturally specific. In 1994, during a project by the NGO Christian Children's Fund's (CCF) specifically to help war-traumatized children, it was found that children were already being helped by indigenous psychotherapy, provided by indigenous healers in the form of ritual purification ceremonies. This was provided for both ex-combatants and children who had either participated in or witnessed bloodshed "Traditional healing for war-affected children in Angola seems to consist principally of purification or cleansing rituals, attended by family members and the broader community, during which a child is purged and purified of the 'contamination' of war and death, as well as of sin, guilt, and avenging spirits of those killed by a child soldier," the report said. Through it's community reintegration programme in Angola, CCF has trained 5,000 child caregivers to better understand the impact of war on children and has also developed services for children that promote emotional healing. "I cannot say that all western approaches do not apply. Through our work with children we have found that a blending of indigenous forms of therapy and western methods produce some good results. Often we find that cleansing rituals work better for former child soldiers," Carlinda Monteira, CCF's technical advisor, told IRIN. She added that adults affected by the civil war often failed to see the extent to which the conflict had impacted on their relationships with their families and children. "There aren't any NGOs looking at the mental health of adults in the country and this is truly regrettable. When we train adults to care for children affected by war, we hope that they too learn something about their own healing. It is often the first time they get to speak about the war. War has become so normal, people don't know anything else," Monteira said. CCF has established emergency child centres in quartering areas, holding former UNITA rebels and their families, to offer children a safe space to play, resume education and participate in psychosocial interventions designed to help their transition back into community life.