Not Alone
Many who live with mental health conditions experience a profound sense of isolation. Discussing these issues and more so, identifying as someone who lives with them, has been extremely taboo in our society. Thus, many suffer in silence, facing their troubles with no support. But, as the title of the work implies, they are not alone.
Not Alone
Whether you have struggled with suicide yourself or have lost a loved one, know you are not alone. Hear about personal experiences from people in your local community whose lives have been impacted by suicide.
Results: The interviews revealed 4 main themes: (1) positive features of the mHealth app, (2) advice from midwives, (3) experiences gained from using the mHealth app, and (4) recommendations for the future. The participants evaluated the educational program to be a good source of information that was tailored to the local context. The different modes of delivery, including audio and video, accentuated the accessibility of information. The parents evaluated that the facilitator of the featured communication platform, a midwife, provided trustworthy advice. Belongingness to a virtual community beyond the hospital endowed the parents the confidence that they were not alone and were supported by other parents and health care professionals.
Michael Harner, Ph.D., is an anthropologist and founder of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving shamanic knowledge as it survives on the planet and to teaching the basic principles of that knowledge for practical applications in the contemporary world.Harner, who has practiced shamanic healing since 1961, received his doctorate at the University of California-Berkeley. He is a former professor and chairperson of the department of anthropology at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York, and has taught at Columbia, Yale, and UC Berkeley. He also served as co-chair of the anthropology section of the New York Academy of Sciences. His books include The JÃvaro, Hallucinogens and Shamanism, and the classic The Way of The Shaman.In the course of his academic study of shamanism, Harner lived and worked with indigenous peoples in the Upper Amazon, Mexico, Peru, the Canadian Arctic, Samiland, and western North America.Alternative Therapies interviewed Harner at his office in Mill Valley, California, during an intense storm. The following article is from the FSS journal, Shamanism, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring-Summer) 1997, and was originally published in 1996 in Vol. 2, No. 3 of Alternative Therapies.What is Shamanism?Michael Harner: The word "shaman" in the original Tungus language refers to a person who makes journeys to nonordinary reality in an altered state of consciousness. Adopting the term in the West was useful because people didn't know what it meant. Terms like "wizard," "witch," "sorcerer," and "witch doctor" have their own connotations, ambiguities, and preconceptions associated with them. Although the term is from Siberia, the practice of shamanism existed on all inhabited continents.After years of extensive research, Mircea Eliade, in his book, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, concluded that shamanism underlays all the other spiritual traditions on the planet, and that the most distinctive feature of shamanism—but by no means the only one—was the journey to other worlds in an altered state of consciousness."...in our culture many consider it avant-garde if a person talks about the mind-body connection, but the fact that the brain is connected to the rest of the body is not the most exciting news. It's been known for hundreds and thousands of years. What's really important about shamanism, in my opinion, is that the shaman knows that we are not alone. By that I mean, when one human being compassionately works to relieve the suffering of another, the helping spirits are interested and become involved." 041b061a72