Attention of Violence: Construction of Intercultural Strategy in Mental Health. Tikuna People, Amazon (2017-2019)

Introduction: family and community violence is a problem that affects the Tikuna indigenous population, the Magüta, of the Arara community (Amazon, Colombia). Traditionally approached from their own worldview and misunderstood from the Western perspective. However, coordinated work would enable more effective care. The objective was to propose an intercultural strategy in mental health that contributes to responding to the care needs of family and community violence. Materials and method: qualitative exploratory ethnographic study. It included conventional information gathering techniques (participant observation, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, documentary review and problem trees, field diaries) and unconventional (thinking meetings with traditional doctors, conversations in the field, and music workshops and emotional recognition). Results: the intercultural strategy in mental health for the care of family and community violence consists of three lines: recognition of the context, intervention actions based on intercultural dialogue and a proposal for the promotion of community actions that favor mental health. Conclusion: the relevance of an intercultural strategy in intercultural mental health is identified because it was possible to recognize that the experiences of family and community violence are the result of disobedience to the original mandates established from the history of this town; For this reason, it is proposed that the use of rituals be enabled to complement the institutional treatment of this problem, favoring the individual and collective mental health of this community.