Or…How a Simple Role Play Calmed an Aggressive Creditor
Photo: Marie with the THRIVEGulu counselors, Austin and Christine
A very scared single mother of five came in for her second individual counseling session and said she feared for her son.
Some farming equipment her son was renting to increase his small agriculture business had been stolen. The owner had threatened repeatedly to hurt the young man and to send him to prison unless the family paid for the equipment… immediately! It didn’t help that these demands were made during surprise visits to her home nor that the man was usually very drunk.
Our client had decided in desperation that she needed to consult a witch doctor to find out what was going to happen. She thought she could use her goat, an important asset in Acoli households, for payment. I suggested she try something else first and began teaching her calming techniques, those same techniques used in the West by hostage negotiators. After our client calmed down the owner, she could then tell him her plan whereby he would actually get some money for the lost equipment through simply monthly payments, rather than losing everything. Then we practiced the calming techniques and the scenario through a simple role play.
Lo and behold, the client reported during her next session that a meeting with the owner had been very successful. She had been able to calm him and he had agreed to payments, though through a slightly different arrangement. And she didn’t have to give up her goat!
Except for the most egregious victimizations, the usual Western psychotherapy procedures work well with depression and anxiety, whatever the triggers may be. After all, stress is mediated through the human brain. We all usually react with depression and anxiety when stress breaks down our usual coping strategies. A broad swath of the population in Gulu suffers from depression and anxiety stemming from daily and long-term stressors and the breakdown of individual and community coping strategies. Simple tools such as calming techniques can be remarkably successful as part of a comprehensive treatment strategy.
Our mental health program at THRIVEGulu is being developed to treat depression and anxiety, an area where there is currently a significant gap in services. The worst PTSD disorders are treated in Gulu by Victims Voices (VIVO), which has developed an extremely effective Narrative Exposure Therapy treatment for victims of acute trauma. The main Gulu Referral Hospital here can treat the worst suicidal and psychotic problems, but suffers from overcrowding and an extreme lack of resources. Many other NGOs, including THRIVEGulu, provide psychosocial interventions that support community mental health through addressing economic, health, educational and familial issues.
However, the vast majority of mental health problems in Gulu have no organized program offering treatment. THRIVEGulu is working to fill that gap.
By Marie Blanchard, volunteer clinical psychologist at THRIVEGulu
