Eleison welcomes the second group of participants in the Healing and Resilience after Trauma (HaRT) program. HaRT is a 12-week group mental health program, developed and adapted in collaboration with movewithhart.org, that incorporates mindfulness, mind-body practices, and supportive group discussions. The HaRT program explores three core themes: 1) safety in the body, 2) radical self-love, and 3) healthy relationships. After the program launch last June 2022, Eleison is proud to continue implementing the HaRT intervention as part of our commitment to provide survivors of human trafficking and gender-based violence with trauma-informed, survivor-centered, and community-based mental health care.
Eleison strives to improve survivors’ access to mental health services. Survivors are at a higher risk for developing mental health concerns such as depression, anxiety, self-harm, suicidal ideation and behavior, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Mental health and psychosocial support services are less accessible in low- and middle-income countries, where only one in every four persons has access to needed mental health care. Survivors face an even greater disadvantage in getting their mental health needs met, as most services are inaccessible and prohibitively expensive for survivors.
Despite the creation of a national mental health system in the Philippines in 2018, significant barriers exist in mainstreaming psychosocial support services and establishing mental health as a public health priority. Most interventions overemphasize clinical mental health and rely on the availability of specialists, who are extremely limited in number and often not accessible to marginalized communities. New and innovative community-based programs are essential to address common help-seeking barriers, namely stigma, inaccessibility of services, and the high demand for culturally and contextually-sensitive interventions.
HaRT is a low-tech and survivor-centered intervention that can be implemented by non-mental health professionals. It has been culturally adapted for survivors in the Philippines and is offered for free. In partnership with HaRT and the University of Alabama, we are simultaneously conducting research to evaluate the impact of the program on survivors’ mental health and social well-being, thus contributing to the body of evidence-based interventions. The current HaRT research study will culminate after a mixed-methods evaluation of the intervention with three cohorts.
If you want to learn more about the HaRT program, you can contact us at info@eleisonfoundation.org or donate here.
