December 7, 2022 – In October, WPDI Uganda celebrated World Mental Health Day at the Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement with a special event entitled “Making Mental Health a Global Priority.” The event was attended by 1,217 people and many local partners and actors. The proposed activities aimed at raising awareness of mental health issues within local communities, including sessions with individuals formerly suffering from extreme mental health issues, drama activities run by trauma survivors and dance sessions by WPDI survivor groups.
Mental Health Day is of particular importance for WPDI, as we consider that for peace to flourish between individuals and groups, people must also be able to establish inner peace. Likewise, reconciliation will be harder to achieve if individuals traumatized by conflict and its consequences have nowhere to turn to engage on the path of healing their minds. WPDI has made a concerted effort to strengthen the trauma healing component of our Conflict Resolution program since 2018 in order to give communities and individuals the best chance of recovery and of fostering lasting peace. WPDI there provides psychosocial support through counseling, referral of survivors and home visits to survivors, which have had an enormous impact on local communities. This has led to healing among beneficiaries and has improved the health and wellbeing of people of concern living in the Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement. Mental Health Day is therefore a key opportunity to inform communities and ensure that more people can start healing processes.
The event we organized at the Settlement, was attended by the local District Health Officer (DHO) Kiryandongo, Dr. Imam Mutyaba, who commented that “stigma, discrimination and human rights violations against people with mental health conditions or trauma are widespread in communities and care systems everywhere. Mental health conditions are usually painful and unfortunately stigma only amplifies that distress. Let’s embrace the wise word of this years’ World Mental Health day theme and make Mental Health and Wellbeing for all a truly global priority”. He therefore urged partners to work hard towards ending stigma and discrimination against trauma survivors”.
One participant, Sulaiman Rajab, 42, a refugee from South Sudan living in cluster MR at Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement, was honest about his mental health issues and the positive effect of WPDI’s trauma healing initiative: “Arising from the nasty experience that I went through during the war in South Sudan, I became emotionally low which greatly affected my general life to an extend that I could not do anything productive for my family. Through my interaction with WPDI Trauma healing officers and ToTs I came to know that my mental health is everything and I should prioritize it since my life depends on it, because there is no health without mental health! I am now able to socialize normally and also engage in productive activities that have a beneficial impact to my family.”
Trauma healing is a key factor of WPDI’s approach to dealing with conflict at a local level, and a main area of focus for the years to come. Helping victims of trauma come to terms with their experiences, learn how to leverage this trauma is a positive way and become active, empowered peacebuilders in their communities is at the heart of our global program to build lasting global peace.
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