In pursuit of ginhawa

October is Mental Health Awareness Month. It’s a tumultuous time, with ongoing investigations into corruption activities. Numerous disasters have also befallen us, with earthquakes, typhoons, and more floods. How does one grapple with mental health amidst all this? How can we bring about ginhawa for ourselves and for each other?

Ginhawa is an indigenous concept most analogous to Western notions of well-being. Interestingly, the etymology of the word comes from ginhaoa, meaning “stomach” and is also connected to breath. Thus, ginhawa encompasses more than just subjective well-being but also pertains to a sense of wholeness in both body and spirit, in both physical and mental realms. Ginhawa, in this sense, is also seen as an essential component of “living” or “being alive.” Is it any wonder, then, that Filipinos express their love and care for one another through food? We would often joke that the Filipino translation of “I love you” is “Kumain ka na ba?”

I bring in the concept of caring for others because it is also an integral part of ginhawa. A distinct aspect of ginhawa, as opposed to subjective well-being, is that the Filipino’s sense of ginhawa also hinges upon the ginhawa of their group or community. If our family is well, we are also well. If our neighborhood is thriving, we are also thriving. If our country is prospering, we are also prospering. Ginhawa goes beyond mere self-care or individual well-being. Ginhawa requires collective well-being as well. The pain of others becomes our pain. Our own sense of ginhawa is incomplete if others are suffering.

How would mental health policies and interventions centered on ginhawa look?

We must first recognize that individual interventions are not enough. As mental health providers, we need to care about what our clients care about. This may be their family, their standing in the community, the plight of their people, or even their concerns about global events like climate change and political unrest. We must understand how far their sense of ginhawa reaches. This gives us a scope of challenges that must be addressed.

You can imagine that this is a radical departure from focusing solely on individual symptoms and ailments. Kapwa psychology makes this all understandable. Kapwa is a central indigenous value in Sikolohiyang Pilipino, loosely translated as “shared being.” Through the lens of kapwa, we can easily see that the client’s sense of being is shared with their family and community. Thus, our client’s well-being is very much rooted in the well-being of their family and community. And so, we find ourselves from time to time in situations where clients themselves seem to be doing okay, and yet they are languishing. They have a sense of heaviness and unease that they can’t make sense of. If we take a step back and see our client, not in isolation, but as connected to others, we are much more likely to see the root of their suffering. When we see our clients’ suffering as connected to the suffering of their loved ones, we see with clarity what we must do: we need to solve collective suffering to solve individual suffering.

As such, mental health rooted in ginhawa puts collective action and community interventions front and center. The fight against corruption, for instance, is a mental health intervention. Advocating and pursuing solutions toward food security, including combating food inflation, is an important mental health policy. Finding long-term solutions to climate change is a mental health priority.

Ginhawa is not necessarily a life without any hardship or adversity; one can experience ginhawa in the face of problems. There is an aspect of ginhawa, however, that pertains to freedom. When we feel stuck in our problems, that is not ginhawa. When we feel that we are free to choose the best solution for ourselves, then ginhawa is possible. Political actions that protect and increase our freedoms, then, are also mental health interventions.

Global definitions of mental health all ultimately point to one’s capacity to live one’s best life. This subsumes the capacity to love and care for oneself, the capacity to maintain fulfilling relationships with others, the capacity to feel productive, and the capacity to contribute to society. A ginhawa perspective shows us that these are not separate components but are deeply interconnected ones.

Providing ginhawa is not limited to individual interventions like therapy or medication. Nor is it limited to skills-building and other group interventions. It requires an understanding of the holistic self—physical, mental, relational, spiritual—as well as an understanding of their kapwa, their sharedness of being with others. When we take the time and effort to understand Filipinos in this way, only then can we come up with innovations in mental health that truly work for us.

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aatuazon@up.edu.ph