A public health approach to healing and wellness around trauma and family violence

Illinois Project LAUNCH, a SAMHSA funded grant through the Illinois Department of Human Services started a collaborative journey with local and state stakeholders in 2010 to address mental health issues.This led to the discovery of the impoortance of addressing family/community violence and it's impacts on mental health of families with young children on the westside of Chicago. During this process the collaborative was introduced to a conceptual framework called "A Public Health Approach to Children's Mental Health" published by the Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development. This monograph helped to establish a foundational approach to dealing with the impacts of trauma on children's mental health. As part of this approach stakeholders learned about this conceptual framework which included a scan of resources available in the community and contributed to a shift in the way "mental health services and supports" became defined. Resources such as mental health consultation, home visiting programs and public awareness campaigns on reducing violence became "prevention" interventions, while programs such as Head Start, life skills coaching and Parent Cafes became "promotion" interventions that support mental wellness. By re-framing this approach with this perspective our community learned that instead of lacking key mental health interventions in the community we were resource rich in mental health supports and services. Key interventions will be addressed as well as a description of how the re-framing of our inter-disciplinary collaborative helped to shift the way family/community violence was addressed and how mental wellness and healing became a key focus.