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Healing Hurt People (HHP), the program that helped save his life, now employs men like Jermaine McCorey - men who used to be a part of a violent life on the streets of Philadelphia - to reach out to boys and young men in the emergency department and help get them through empathy and personalized support. HHP's goal is to help young people recognize the role trauma has played in shaping their lives, to respect and honor their experience and to help them avoid fueling the cycle of violence.

Healing trauma has never been an easy process but programs like Healing Hurt People help to promote recovery in traumatized, angry young men. This program, in partnership with local medical services, aims to provide therapy in place of violence, which would only cause more trauma down the road. Those who stick with the program have found great success in overcoming their pasts.

Making personal connections supports mental health and wellbeing. The San Francisco-based nonprofit, Sidewalk Talk, trains volunteers to go out and engage on a personal level with individuals in underserved communities. The volunteers simply listen and provide empathy, a valuable resource for those who might not have access to mental health care.

Creating a more compassionate working environment helps lead clinicians suffering from depression, trauma, or burnout, to seek care. The University of California San Diego’s medical system has piloted several approaches. Code Lavender encourages small acts of intentional kindness toward co-workers. Caregiver Support Teams identify peer mentors that can provide emotional support and help struggling colleagues.

In order to provide a means for people who have experienced trauma to find support and begin to heal, Reverend Liz Walker founded a counseling group for her Roxbury neighbors. Rev. Walker’s post-traumatic healing group differs from others in that the group is run by the participants’ peers, the group is located in Roxbury, and participation is free.

The Alternatives to Violence Project, an international nonprofit, provides workshops around conflict resolution, personal growth, and other social skills to people experiencing incarceration. While a large-scale organization, individual prisons have the agency to implement the workshops. In Washington’s Pierce county, they tailor their workshops for veterans experiencing incarceration, teaching community-building, self-reflection, listening, and de-programming aggression and violence.

In Japan, an organization called New Start employs women that help men who are withdrawn from society. These men, called hikikomori, are often experiencing mental health issues, and cannot leave their homes. That’s where New Start’s rent-a-sister program comes in. These women spend months, sometimes years, with these men, building trust, giving advice, and adjust to society. The organization also provide halfway houses for these men, with 80% successfully re-entering society as independent individuals.

A unique issue in Japan is that of the “Hikikomori” – men who have totally withdrawn from society, often as a response to bullying, depression, or trauma. The NGO, New Start, offers a “rental sister” program, which provide the Hikikomori with an older female mentor to interact with and guide them toward more independent lives. Along the way, the hope is that they’ll build trusting relationships and practice social engagement.

Two women travel on a journey seeking to heal pain through forgiveness with the help of a program in Baltimore that brings together mothers who have lost sons to violence. One woman's son was murdered and the other woman's son is standing trial for that crime. This article shows how complex and long such a process can be and doesn't sugarcoat the difficulty of reconciliation.

Black communities are often left without adequate counseling services when faced with racial trauma, but clinical psychologists are working to address this. So far, solutions include opening clinics that specialize in African-American mental health and social media campaigns focused on normalizing conversations around mental health awareness in the Black community.