Holistic Mental Health Key to Maui’s Recovery

A variety of therapies can help individuals impacted by a collective trauma reflect on and improve their mental health.

It’s commonly said that everyone processes grief and trauma differently. The corollary is that mental health therapy must be as diverse as the people who need it. That’s why it can be so impactful to redefine mental health services through an indigenous lens, according to Keolamau Tengan, executive director of Wailuku nonprofitt Ka‘ehu, whose Mālama ‘Ohana program uses a Hawaiian cultural worldview to address mental health.

“We offer an ‘āina (land) or kai (ocean) based program to get the body moving and acting in service and connection to nature. We then combine that with different activities based on Hawaiian art and culture,” says Tengan.

The program offers four to six cultural activity stations at no charge to attendees, and, through repetitive activities such as lei making or lauhala weaving, helps ground participants back into their body so they can start to open up and share their feelings, Tengan observes.

Supporting Ka‘ehu’s work with a Maui Strong Fund grant is part of the Hawai‘i Community Foundation’s culturally grounded and holistic approach to Maui’s mental health response. Embracing the principles of trauma-informed care, it recognizes that a variety of alternative therapies can help individuals impacted by a collective trauma reflect on and improve their mental health.

HCF’s Maui Strong Fund mental health strategy stems from Hawai‘i’s efforts to become a trauma-informed state. In February 2024, Gov. Josh Green declared Hawai‘i trauma-informed and directed the state Office of Wellness and Resilience (OWR) to implement a trauma-informed care framework throughout state departments and with community-based organizations. The framework integrates safety, trust and transparency, empowerment, collaboration, peer support, and honoring cultural, gender and historical issues.

Kehau Meyer, senior program officer for HCF’s Maui Recovery Effort, says the Maui Strong Fund mental health response was intentionally inclusive of both clinical resources and community-centered wellness.

“We listened to our organizations doing work on the ground and understood that Maui needed certain resources that were comforting and familiar while also building in a warm handoff to traditional mental health resources,” she says. “The mental health network that formed was helpful in ensuring HCF stayed on track with the collective efforts of experts and practitioners actively responding to the needs.”

HCF’s mental health response is directly informed by OWR’s weekly meetings of mental health providers, clinicians and other partners that discuss mental health needs they’re seeing and hearing from Maui community members. It’s led HCF to fund flexible therapeutic interventions to help impacted individuals cope, group grieving and healing activities, and longer-term therapeutic services for individuals and families to prevent and address Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

HCF’s strategy has resulted in better coordination and more diverse therapeutic support options for fire-affected households. For example, the foundation has contracted nine clinicians and group practices to provide free therapy sessions to affected individuals—up to 10 sessions—and on-site mental health support at community meetings. It’s a short-term solution to reduce barriers to mental health care, such as lack of insurance or when individuals find it too difficult to get therapy sessions approved by their health insurance. “We really need to understand the needs of Maui and the needs of those serving Maui,” says Michele Navarro Ishiki, director of mental health services at Piha Wellness and Healing, and one of the contracted clinicians providing therapy funded by HCF’s Maui Strong Fund.

Learn more about The Maui Strong Fund at hawaiicommunityfoundation.org/strengthening/maui-strong-fund.