Roger Noel and Jacques Solon Jean of the Soulaje Lespri Moun Project at the APA Convention in DC

by Leah James

In early August, Roger Noel and Jacques Solon Jean joined me (Leah James) in Washington DC to give a presentation at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association. Our talk focused on the development, implementation, and evaluation of Soulaje Lespri Moun (SLM – Relief for the Spirit), a lay mental health worker project housed by the AFD.  Roger, the project manager, Solon, the project psychologist, and I have worked closely over the past year and a half with a dedicated team of Ajan Sante Mantal (lay mental health workers) to provide coping skills seminars for residents of camps for internally displaced peoples (IDP camps) in Port-au-Prince.  The Ajan have worked in 7 camps, with nearly a thousand residents, providing education about natural disaster safety and common responses to stress and trauma, and teaching relaxation techniques and other coping strategies. Participants in the seminars are given exams, and if they pass, receive certificates. They are then prepared to run their own support groups for other camp residents. This model allow for time- and cost-efficient dissemination of information.   We have also found that for camp residents to re-engage with their own stressful and traumatizing situation with new skills and in a helping role has therapeutic properties in itself.

Roger and Solon working with a group of camp residence at Carradeux

Our presentation was very well-received, and we met many interested and enthusiastic people. Although thirteen thousand people from all over the world attended the conference, Roger and Solon were the only attendees from Haiti and were honored to represent their country and the AFD. They were always surrounded by curious people asking them about their experiences and expertise. In addition to our main presentation, we were also asked to give a conversation hour for Division 56 (the trauma division) of the APA. Roger and Solon had been awarded funding from Division 56 and from the APA’s International Office – we were very thankful for their support and warm reception. We now have many new friends and collaborators, including two Haitian-American doctoral students.

The trip was not entirely business – this was Roger and Solon’s first visit to the US, so we were sure to do plenty of sightseeing as well. We visited the White House, the Washington Monument, the Natural History museum, saw a 3-D showing of Captain America, and ate as many different kinds of food as we could find. Solon’s favorite was burritos, while Roger liked sushi and Ethiopian food.  A successful trip on all accounts!

Note: Presentations about SLM have also been accepted at the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS) in Baltimore and the Caribbean Regional Conference of Psychology in the Bahamas, both in November 2011.

Jacques Solon Jean, Roger Noel, and Leah James at the APA Convention in DC

AFD Lay Mental Health Workers lead a workshop at a camp in Tabarre

Aristide Foundation Lay Mental Health Workers Lead Workshops in the Camps

Four months after January 12 the experience of that day — the terror and the losses — remain vivid and present in the minds of all Haitians who survived the quake.   Nearly everyone has some degree of post-traumatic stress with hyper-vigilance, startle responses, sleep difficulties, intrusive memories, fear, anxiety, grief, and anger widespread.    Even before the quake Haiti’s mental health structure was nearly non-existent.  Right now for the majority of the population of Port-au-Prince, who are now living in tents in refugee settlements, mental health care is both inaccessible and foreign to their experience.

Beginning in late April the AFD in cooperation with a group of social workers and doctoral students from the University of Michigan began working together to to create a Haitian-model for lay mental health workers to reach people in the camps.  Ten extraordinary young Haitian college students spent a week receiving training from Leah James, a social worker and doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan, and Dr. Todd Favorite and Dr. Mike
Messina, psychologists at the PTSD clinic at the Ann Arbor VA. (Read Leah’s Huffington Post Article Describing the evolution of this project here).

A Haitian psychologist who has been providing mental health care at the AFD weekly clinics signed on to advise the project, and provide ongoing mentoring for the young mental health workers.   Together they created a culturally appropriate  90-minute  psycho-education and coping skills curriculum.  The project that has emerged from this collaboration we are calling Soulaje Lespri Moun, or Relief for the Spirit.  Soulaje Lespri Moun is an expansion of the AFD Mobile School project.  For the past four weeks The Lay Mental Health Workers have been working at two of the mobile school sites (at Carradeux and Building 2004),  leading workshops for parents of the children who’ve attended the mobile schools.

US Mental Health Professionals training AFD Lay Mental Health Workers in April

The goal of the workshops is to decrease stigma, shame, fear, and self-blame and increase ongoing healing and communication within families and communities.   The Lay Mental Health Workers first encourage participants to share their experiences and talk about the symptoms of trauma they are experiencing.   They work on trying to “normalize” the responses, that is to emphasize that it is a normal human response to continue to feel that the ground is shaking, to be hyper-vigilant etc.    And then they teach basic relaxation and self-soothing techniques designed to reduce symptoms of physiological hyper-arousal and thus decrease anxiety, fear, irritability, startle response, bodily aches and pains, and sleep difficulty.

Soulaje Lespri Moun is not an effort to train mental health professionals with the skills needed to work with the seriously mentally ill (although this is needed, too). Rather, it is a movement toward widespread dissemination of education and coping skills to benefit the general public in the belief that some of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress among the population can be alleviated through basic psycho-education about common reactions to trauma paired with training in relaxation and other coping strategies.

We began the project as a pilot to train this first group of 10 mental health workers, and find out how participants in the camps responded to the workshops.  Given the conditions of life in the camps — hunger first and foremost — we wondered if people would be motivated to participate.   Initial results are heartening, in fact inspiring, largely because of the dedication and determination of the young people carrying out the project.   They report that despite some initial resistance to a project that offers only words, they are having success drawing people into the sessions.  Participants report relief from some of their symptoms, and most importantly, they say they are sharing the skills they’ve  learned with family and friends.  For instance many participants report that they do the breathing and other self-soothing exercises nightly with their partners and children.

We would very much like to expand the project and train at least 10 more mental health workers in late-June.  To do that we need to find the additional funding, most of which will go to paying Haitians who staff the project.

An AFD psycholgist, and lay mental health worker lead a workshop for kids at a camp in Tabarre

Summary of objectives

• To quickly and efficiently provide free basic mental health education and coping skills to residents of Port-au-Prince IDP camps
• To develop an effective, culturally-appropriate protocol for presenting mental health education, coping skills, and relaxation techniques in a group setting and to evaluate the effectiveness of this model in reducing symptoms of PTSD and depression among recipients of the intervention AND among the lay mental health workers implementing the intervention.
• To provide practical training and employment to young Haitian high school and college grads.
• To create a sustainable system of lay mental health provision which will ultimately be maintained entirely by Haitian organizations and workers.
• To establish a safe and efficient pathway for US volunteer mental health professionals who will provide ongoing training to lay mental health workers.  (All foreign volunteers will pay or raise money to cover their expenses.  Any funds raised by the Aristide Foundation for this project go directly to project expenses in Haiti. )

If you would like to support this work tax-deductible donations can be made here:

Or mail checks to: Aristide Foundation, PO Box 490271, Key Biscayne, Florida 33149

All donations are tax deductible and will be acknowledged.

For more information on the the Lay Mental Health Worker Project and on volunteer opportunities for international mental health professionals wishing to support this project please visit: http://mentalhealthhaiti.wordpress.com/

AFD Mobile School Monitors meet with a social worker from the US to get training and support on how to work with children who have lost their homes and family members in the quake

This week at the AFD in Haiti a delegation from the US, which included Leah James a volunteer social worker from the University of Michigan led a series of trainings and group discussions to help AFD staff, doctors, volunteers and community members begin to talk about, and find ways to cope with, the trauma they have all been through.

The week  began with a large training session for all 102 of the Mobile School monitors.   They  shared the experiences they’ve had thus far working with children in refugee camps across the Port-au-Prince area.  They gained some tools and guidance on how best to support the kids they are working with.  The sessions made use of a Creole language curriculum developed in January for the Miami schools to give teachers there tools and guidance on how to help Haitian children who are suffering after the trauma of the quake and the loss of family members.  

Sessions were so useful, and in such demand we opened them up community members, specifically to parents of the children in the Mobile School project in the refugee camps where the AFD is working.    By Friday over 200 people had participated in these sessions at the Foundation.   Below  a group of women who have lost their homes, and many of whom lost family  members, talk about what they have been through since the quake with a  with a volunteer social worker on a balcony at the Aristide Foundation.