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Recorded at	April 10, 2022
Event	TED2022
Duration (min:sec)	08:07
Video Type	TED Stage Talk
Words per minute	167.8 medium
Readability (FK)	51.22 difficult
Speaker	Celina de Sola


1	00:04	There's a shocking statistic I want to share with you.
2	00:08	Latin America is home to only eight percent of the world’s population
3	00:13	but one third of its homicides.
4	00:19	This is especially extreme in the Northern Triangle countries
5	00:22	of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador,
6	00:26	where I'm from and where I live.
7	00:29	Just imagine the impact that this kind of unrelenting violence can have
8	00:33	on a person's health, productivity and well-being.
9	00:39	Especially because we know that if we're exposed to violence,
10	00:43	this can result in trauma.
11	00:46	And when that happens,
12	00:48	our brain's stress response actually shuts down core functions
13	00:52	like problem solving, critical thinking and emotional regulation.
14	00:56	And it elevates the ones that we need to protect ourselves and survive.
15	01:02	So this makes it really hard to learn to make decisions
16	01:05	and even maintain relationships.
17	01:08	It can also increase our risks of lung and heart disease, diabetes,
18	01:13	anxiety and depression.
19	01:16	So imagine what this can mean for entire communities
20	01:18	when almost everybody can be walking around
21	01:21	with unaddressed stress and trauma.
22	01:24	Then picture what can happen as individual
23	01:27	and collective trauma collide.
24	01:31	To make matters worse,
25	01:33	we know that exposure to violence can lead to more violence.
26	01:37	Research has shown that survivors of violence
27	01:40	can be up to six times more likely
28	01:42	to either be involved in violence or be revictimized.
29	01:47	It's literally the definition of a vicious cycle.
30	01:52	The good news is we know that we can interrupt this cycle
31	01:55	by addressing the underlying trauma with better access to mental health care.
32	02:01	The only problem is
33	02:02	access to mental health care in these communities
34	02:05	is virtually non-existent.
35	02:08	So just to give you an idea,
36	02:10	in the United States,
37	02:11	there are about 270 mental health care workers
38	02:13	for every 100,000 people.
39	02:16	In Honduras, this drops to two.
40	02:20	So we're left with this classic conundrum.
41	02:22	We know how to help solve the problem,
42	02:24	but we don't have the resources to do it.
43	02:27	But what if we re-envision what or who these resources could be?
44	02:33	I think we should,
45	02:34	because there are ways to flood communities
46	02:36	with access to mental health care.
47	02:38	It’s already being done, and it’s working.
48	02:41	And I want to tell you a little bit about how we're doing it at Glasswing.
49	02:46	We're training thousands of existing government employees like teachers,
50	02:50	nurses, doctors and police officers
51	02:53	on trauma education and self-care.
52	02:56	We're essentially trying to create a whole core of lay mental health workers
53	03:01	who are already serving on the front lines
54	03:03	and can therefore step in and buffer the impacts of violence and trauma
55	03:08	on themselves and on the communities they serve.
56	03:12	We've trained health care workers
57	03:14	to be able to recognize the signs of trauma,
58	03:17	to be able to help patients understand what they're experiencing
59	03:20	and equip them with tools to cope or refer them if they need it.
60	03:25	We've actually seen that trauma-informed violence prevention work in hospitals
61	03:29	can reduce the likelihood of revictimization by up to 30 percent.
62	03:35	(Applause)
63	03:40	In schools, we know that if children and adolescents
64	03:43	have access to a caring adult that can help them cope with stress,
65	03:46	their grades improve,
66	03:48	their conduct improves and their resilience.
67	03:51	And in our work with police,
68	03:52	90 percent of the police we trained
69	03:54	actually felt better able to regulate their emotions
70	03:58	and to deal with anxiety and fear.
71	04:01	Eighty percent even told us
72	04:02	that they felt better equipped to help their peers.
73	04:07	I want to share a story with you.
74	04:09	Back in 2018, our Guatemala team was working in a community
75	04:13	with really high rates of crime, violence and stigma.
76	04:17	One of the schools we were working in
77	04:19	is actually a school where kids ended up
78	04:20	if they got expelled or if they got in trouble.
79	04:23	So that's why Walter, a 17-year-old student,
80	04:26	was really surprised and a little confused, when Eluvia,
81	04:30	one of our trauma-informed school coordinators,
82	04:33	showed up to recruit him and his friends to work at the local primary school.
83	04:38	But Eluvia's from that community,
84	04:39	and she knew that if she could empower a young man like Walter
85	04:43	to become involved and become a school coordinator,
86	04:45	she could not only transform his life
87	04:47	but also the life of the kids he'd work with.
88	04:50	So sure enough, a couple of weeks later,
89	04:52	Walter was trained and leading a group of 20 little kids in a glee club.
90	04:58	He loved it.
91	05:00	(Applause)
92	05:03	He loved it so much that he continued to show up every week
93	05:06	for over two years.
94	05:09	But one afternoon,
95	05:11	one of Walter's neighbors ran into the school screaming
96	05:14	that Walter had to get home
97	05:16	because his sister had been shot and killed.
98	05:20	Walter sprinted out.
99	05:22	And as he described it to me,
100	05:23	he felt his mind and body go numb.
101	05:27	Then he felt his heart start to race and his chest fill with rage.
102	05:32	He knew who had killed his sister.
103	05:35	And he ran up to his room to get a gun.
104	05:40	Let me pause there for a sec.
105	05:42	Do you remember what I told you a minute ago,
106	05:44	about how violence can lead to more violence?
107	05:48	That could have been Walter.
108	05:50	But it wasn't.
109	05:52	Because he told me that when he pictured his mentor, Eluvia,
110	05:56	and the little glee club kids finding out that their role model had killed someone,
111	06:02	he put the gun down.
112	06:05	And that, that right there --
113	06:07	(Applause)
114	06:08	is where the cycle of violence stopped.
115	06:10	(Applause)
116	06:12	That's everything.
117	06:16	I have other stories like Walter and Eluvia's.
118	06:18	But to interrupt and to stop this epidemic of violence,
119	06:22	we need thousands more.
120	06:25	And there are great ways to do this that are replicable.
121	06:29	We know that we can provide more health care in communities
122	06:33	provided by regular people.
123	06:35	I’m talking about community, and I’m talking about systems change
124	06:39	at the same time.
125	06:42	First, we train everybody in public schools,
126	06:45	public hospitals, clinics and police precincts
127	06:48	on trauma, education and self care
128	06:50	so they can better take care of themselves
129	06:52	and also those that they serve understand trauma and manage it.
130	06:56	Then we train a subset as interventionists
131	06:59	so they can deal with emergencies,
132	07:00	providing crisis intervention and ongoing support.
133	07:03	And then we train a subset of those interventionists as trainers
134	07:07	so they can continue to train their peers
135	07:09	and they can train other organizations
136	07:11	so we can have a growing network of trauma-informed services
137	07:14	in each community.
138	07:17	The great thing is this model is scalable and it’s cost-effective,
139	07:21	because we're working within public systems
140	07:23	with people that are already there.
141	07:25	So really, we know that violence happens between people,
142	07:29	but so does healing.
143	07:31	That's where it starts.
144	07:33	So we know the power lies in people, in relationships,
145	07:36	in a community healing itself.
146	07:38	One of my favorite quotes by Viktor Frankl in “Man’s Search for Meaning” is:
147	07:42	"Between stimulus and response, there is a space.
148	07:46	In that space is our power to choose our response.
149	07:49	And in our response lies our growth and our freedom."
150	07:54	Our goal is to literally infiltrate the space
151	07:57	in between violent stimulus and response,
152	07:59	with mental health knowledge and skills
153	08:01	so that communities can pave their own way to healing and resilience.
154	08:05	Thank you so much.
155	08:07	(Applause and cheers)

Celina de Sola: Mental health care that disrupts cycles of violence