280s Meditation’s Cadet Deployed for Maintaining Balinese Balance and Harmony

Many visitors to Bali have found the way of life there remarkably cohesive. A network of close social relationships, binding individuals to their extended family and the families to each other, have meant there has been very little of the crime, prostitution, gratuitous violence, drug abuse, or crippling poverty that plague even the most affluent societies in modern times. Now, the society faces rapid modernization, with considerable dislocation of individuals and families from the land to the cities. Immigration from other Indonesian islands brings in people with alien traditions and religions, undermining the cohesiveness of the Balinese culture and society.

“I believe that the strength and vitality of a healthy society depend, not on the surface behaviours of people, but on the depth of connection that they have to themselves. From there, the customs and traditions appropriate to a people and a place evolve”. said Professor Luh Ketut Suryani as she opened the training for 280s people who willing to devote themselves for humanity and harmony at Wantilan DPRD Bali, Renon.

 

 

 

“There are many people from outside  trying to sell their meditation method in Bali by fooling our people that Balinese has no meditation technique, and that’s wrong”, add Professor Suryani trying to make the Balinese grounded with their own culture. Meditation is not a business but something that people should spread for humanity and peace. “How can you feel peace when you start counting how much money  that you can earn from tricking other people?’, said Professor Suryani in the end of the program as she believed that her movement will help to maintain the balance and harmony in the island of Bali.

Challenging Rendang Public Health Centre for Community Mental Health

There are nearly 54 million people around the world with severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia. People living in developing countries are disproportionately affected. Mental disorders are increasingly prevalent in developing countries, the consequence of persistent poverty-driven conditions, the demographic transition, conflicts in fragile states and natural disasters. At the same time, more than 50% of developing countries do not provide any care for persons with mental disorders in the community.

“Although community mental health services are likely to have less possibilities for neglect and violations of human rights, which are too often encountered in mental hospitals, but the priority of our government and the stigma among mental health provider still challenging”, said Professor Luh Ketut Suryani as she keeps her works in the community since 2006 and finding no significant helps from government and other funding bodies. For those reasons she tries to challange Rendang public health center in Karangasem to provide a community mental health service in their area.

 

 

 

The call for community mental health services is especially timely since, in spite of a clear message from WHO in 2001, only a few countries have made adequate progress in this area. Also, in many countries, closing of mental hospitals is not accompanied by the development of community services, leaving a service vacuum. The immediate challenge for low income countries is to use primary health care settings, particularly through community approaches that use low-cost, holistic, culturally sensitive and community-based strategies, a development of a mental health model can be achieved that offers a fair and effective service to the population as what the institute has been trying to work in this matter.

Finding Identity for Parents with mental disability children’s

Hundreds parents of disabilities children attends the meeting to find self identity in the capital city of Gianyar as a preventative way to make parents understand better on their special children’s who’s suffering a mental disabilities. In the realities no data on the number of mental disabilities children has been acknowledge by Bali’s government as the children keep on suffering from their condition by being discriminate.

“Many parents blame them self of having a disabilities child in their family, and we want to make them see from a different point of view by re framing their childhood memories”, said Professor Luh Ketut Suryani as she lead the program together with Yayasan Sukacita yesterday morning.

Many of mental disabilities children still hide in the community without any attention from community nor government. The parents have to raise their children without having any education. “There’s not enough school nor teachers for all the children if we want to put them in school, because the government doesn’t know how many are they and how many still don’t get education”, said Marieke Nijland, special education consultant  from Yayasan Sukacita. For that reason Suryani Institute take an initiative together with Yayasan Sukacita to run a survey in community and find the unfortunate one and give them a hope for a better life.

Mental Health Continuing Education for Health Provider

After receiving the first workshop at Manggis Public Health Center last week, it gave more confidence for the health provider to deliver mental health program in their awareness to the community. The program hopefully will highly successful in identifying people who did not have access to the hospital based mental health services. With adequate resources, especially affordable modern medications, the community mental health outreach project in Bali has the potential to treat many more mentally ill patients effectively. 

“We have to deliver this awareness to the comunity although our government policy has diverted funds from this project and community outreach mental health remains severely underfunded”, said Professor Luh Ketut Suryani  as she believed the project has further strengthened linkages and collaboration in training and education for health provider in public health center.

 

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