The Communitarian Mental Health Group: Promoting mental health through daily experiences in Brazil

Abstract

In Brazil, the mental health field has been the scenario of many transformations, among them, the recognition of community and group-based interventions as significant approaches concerning mental health promotion. These approaches regard the interpersonal relationships as a resource to individual's mental health care and the construction of a helping network. This study aimed to present and describe the Communitarian Mental Health Group (CMHG), an innovative intervention developed and studied in Brazil for 18 years. To accomplish that, a study of previous researches about this intervention was conducted, including the analysis of a book published in 2014. The activity goal is to promote mental health through the attitudes of paying attention, understanding and sharing everyday experiences, as resources for personal development and mental health care. It is an open and heterogeneous group, in which participants interact among them aiming mutual help. Each group session lasts 1 h 30, and each session is divided into three phases: sharing experiences with cultural elements considered meaningful to the goals of the group; sharing everyday experiences; sharing what was significant from that session, according to the participants. One of the premises is that taking care of our mental health belongs to the scope of the human being and it is not restricted to patients. Daily experiences are significant resources for mental health promotion and for the construction of a helping communitarian network among participants, bonded through the sharing of their quotidian. The CMHG represents a mental health promotion intervention able to complement other kinds of available treatments.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.