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Community-Building Before, During, and After Times of
Trauma: The Application of the LINC Model of
Community Resilience in Kosovo
Ferid Agani
University of Pristina Judith Landau
Linking Human Systems, LLC, and LINC Foundation
Natyra Agani
Clemson University
A family’s heritage and values have profound bearing on the stressors they encounter and
how they cope. Socioeconomic change, natural and man-made disasters, and international
migration are major influences on the integrity of society. In these times of global finan-
cial crisis, communities around the world are in danger of losing their intrinsic structure
and protective factors. Connectedness or attachment to family and culture of origin corre-
late with reduced risk-taking behaviors and a reduction in family and societal violence,
post-traumatic stress, addiction, depression, suicidality, sexual risk-taking, and other
chronic and ⁄or life-threatening health problems and illnesses. Facilitating these families’
cultural and community ties and enhancing their access to extended-family and commu-
nity resources can thus be protective against trauma. These relationships foster resilience
and reduce the short and long-term effects of stress on families and communities. Targets
of interventions may be individuals, families, or communities. Assessment of vulnerabili-
ties, protective factors, vulnerabilities, goals, and resources encourages and facilitates col-
laboration across natural and artificial support systems. Such collaboration is important
in building resilience rather than perpetuating vulnerability and long-term problems for
individuals, their families, and the communities in which they live. The recent Kosovar
experience in implementing the LINC Model of Community Resilience illustrates these
principles, as applied in the context of substance abuse services and community rebuilding
and in the period soon after armed conflict.
The occupation of Kosovo between 1989 and 1999 and the
war that took place in 1998 and 1999 caused the destruc-
tion of the Kosovo health system and left mental health
services in total disarray (World Health Organization [WHO],
1999)
1. With the dearth of human and institutional resources,
the old-fashioned, hospital-based system of psychiatric services
was not able to respond to the overwhelming mental health
needs of the severely traumatized population. Soon after the
conclusion of the war, a veritable caravan of international non-
governmental (non-profit) organizations (NGOs) appeared in
Kosovo with ‘‘copy-and-paste’’ trauma programs that had been
implemented in other societies soon after armed conflict.
Although these relief efforts diminished the gap between supply
of mental health services and demand, the NGOs generally gave
little attention to Kosovo’s special cultural and situational needs.
As a result, they distracted the few remaining indigenous mental
health professionals from their regular duties and, in so doing,
fractured the modest system and reduced the national capacity
for comprehensive solutions to mental health problems.
In May 2000, during the early postwar days, the second
author (Landau) came to Kosovo as a part of a team of four
mental health professionals from the United States, at the
invitation of the first author (Ferid Agani), who was leading
mental health reform in Kosovo. The purpose of the visit was
to consult on the development of community-based, family-
focused mental health services in the post-Communist, post-
war era.
AJOP 1017
B
Dispatch: 12.2.10 Journal: AJOP
CE: Ulagammal
Journal Name Manuscript No.
Author Received: No. of pages: 7 PE: Sivachandran
This article is based on a plenary address presented at the Greenville
Family Symposium in Greenville, SC, in March 2009. Judith Landau,
then the president of the International Family Therapy Association, rep-
resented that co-sponsor on the program of the Symposium. Ferid
Agani is a former recipient of the Max Hayman Award, presented by
another co-sponsor, the American Orthopsychiatric Association. He is a
former member of the parliament, chair of the Party of Justice, and a
former mental health administrator. Natyra Agani is a student in the
doctoral program offered by the Institute on Family and Neighborhood
Life at Clemson University, a third co-sponsor of the Symposium.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Judith
Landau, Linking Human Systems, LLC, Boulder, CO 80301. Electronic
mail may be sent to jlandau@linkinghumansystems.com.
American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 2010 American Orthopsychiatric Association
2010, Vol. 80, No. 1, 138–144 DOI: 10.1111/j.1939-0025.2010.01017.x
138
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Family functioning and vital kin networks can be severely dis-
rupted by complex, ongoing, or recurrent trauma, as experi-
enced by those who have lived amid armed conflict.
Groundbreaking studies of World War II and Vietnam veterans
and their families (e.g., Catherall, 1992; Figley & McCubbin,
1983, Hill, 1949)
2revealed the stressful effects of combat experi-
ence on family systems. Mental health research and theory has
also broadly emphasized the importance of families as natural
support agents for people with mental illness. Health policy
planners have come to recognize the importance of the family
system—family integrity and family values—for social health
and community functioning (Landau & Weaver, 2006; Landau,
Garrett, et al., 2000
3).
A family’s heritage, values, and predominant form (e.g.,
matriarchal vs. patriarchal) can have profound bearing on the
kinds of stressors and risks it encounters and how it handles
them. Migration provides a poignant case example. In reviewing
the literature, Stanton et al. (1982)
4concluded that there is a
much higher rate of substance abuse in the offspring of families
that have migrated 200 or more miles from their hometowns. It
is likely that migration threatens connections within the inter-
generational family, thus increasing the likelihood of risk-taking
behavior (Landau, 1982).
Studies that Blum (1972)
5conducted with adolescents at high
and low risk for substance abuse showed that families of low-
risk adolescents had a sense of family heritage and history,
whereas the high-risk families did not. These findings are cor-
roborated by the subsequent family research of Baumrind
(1991)
6on adolescent drug use and other problematic behaviors.
Stated differently, families who know where they come from,
and are not cut off from their heritage, may be better able to
maintain stability and navigate the risks of modern life (Landau,
1982). In fact, individuals who are closely connected to their cul-
ture and family of origin, as demonstrated by knowledge of in-
tergenerational family stories and frequency of contact with
family of origin, are significantly less likely to become involved
in risk-taking behavior (Landau, Cole, Tuttle, Clements, &
Stanton, 2000; Tuttle, Landau, Stanton, King, & Frodi, 2004).
This is highly relevant to understanding the role of relationships
in protecting people from the risk-taking associated with many
of the stress-related illnesses that follow major trauma.
A series of studies explored the relationship between connect-
edness to family and culture of origin and level of sexual risk-
taking in 2 samples of women—women in an STD (sexually
transmitted disease) clinic and women in an inner-city Hispanic
community organization. The results showed that knowledge of
stories about grandparents or great-grandparents was a robust
predictor of lower sexual risk-taking. In addition, having at least
monthly contact with extended family members was strongly
associated with lower levels of sexual risk-taking. Both measures
held up independently and together (Landau, Garrett, et al.,
2000).
In a subsequent study involving adolescent girls attending a
mental health clinic (diagnoses included depression, anxiety, and
sexual abuse), intergenerational family stories revealed
themes of resilience (i.e., ancestors overcoming adversity) versus
vulnerability (i.e., depression, family violence, and addiction).
The results indicated that knowing a story with a theme of resil-
ience was most protective. However, knowing any family story,
even if it contained themes of vulnerability, was more protective
than knowing no story at all (Tuttle et al., 2004). These findings
suggest that being able to draw on the rituals, strengths, stories,
scripts, and themes of past generations helps people to recon-
nect their transitional pathways. This enables families to reunite
their communities and thus to enhance their collective resilience.
After finding that the stories of families who interpreted
themes as vulnerable or resilient were not that different from
each other, an intervention—Link Individual Family Empower-
ment (LIFE)—was developed to enhance positive connected-
ness. LIFE focuses on helping families work together to change
their themes of vulnerability to those of resilience (Landau, Mit-
tal, & Wieling, 2008).
Bohanek et al.’s (2006) 7
study of family narrative interaction
and children’s sense of self offers a possible explanation of why
adolescents from families with themes of resilience are more
likely to have high self-worth and are less likely to be involved
in sexual risk-taking. It would be interesting to explore whether
risk-taking is also reduced in children from families whose nar-
rative style allows them to create a coordinated perspective on
past events and to work through negative and positive events.
Bohanek et al. suggest that determining narrative style might be
applicable as a diagnostic tool in family assessment and treat-
ment. It might be also be helpful to analyze family themes for
resilience versus vulnerability.
Community resilience is defined as a community’s capacity,
hope, and faith to withstand major stress, trauma, and loss, to
overcome adversity, and to prevail, usually with increased
resources, competence, and connectedness (Landau, 2005,
2007). The capacity to access resilience, healing, and growth
depends on a balance of stressors and resources, and the level
of connectedness to family, community, culture, and spiritual-
ity (Landau, 2001) 8
. Therefore, mental health professionals can
best foster trauma recovery by shifting from a pathology focus
and expanding the predominant individual treatment
approaches to mobilize the capacity for healing and resilience
in families and communities (Landau, 1982, Landa 1985, 1986,
2004, 2005, 2007 9
; Landau-Stanton, 1986; Rutter, 1999; Walsh,
2003, 2006 10
).
Facilitating Collaborative Care
Family, Peer, and Family and Community Links can provide
a bridge between professionals, families, and communities, par-
ticularly closed communities, for example, highly educated
sophisticated communities, or traditional extended families and
clans, where outside intervention is neither invited nor wel-
comed (Landau, 1982; Landau, Garrett, et al., 2000; Landau
et al., 2008). This process is particularly important for Kosovar
society, which is characterized by large traditional extended
families with an average of six members (Mohanan, 2003).
Link interventions are based on transitional family theory,
which blends here-and-now, transgenerational, and ecosystemic
factors in the practice of family therapy (Seaburn, Landau-Stan-
ton, & Horwitz, 1995 11
). Family, Peer, and Family and Commu-
nity Links serve as natural change agents in their own settings.
Links collaborate with the relevant multidisciplinary profession-
als, but they also honor their own rules and rituals. They also
do not invite the professionals to become an integral, long-term
COMMUNITY-BUILDING BEFORE, DURING, AND AFTER TIMES OF TRAUMA 139
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part of their family and community. Facilitating natural change
agents as Links allows the tradition, strength, pride, and privacy
of the community to remain intact and draws on group resil-
ience, while respecting the community’s capacity for healthy
change and survival.
Community-wide intervention involves all of the systems. It
draws from each level of connections in the design of any pro-
gram. These interventions provide the process, and the popula-
tion itself designs the content. The participants include
individual traditional and non-traditional families, natural and
artificial support systems, all of the relevant professionals, and
the entire community structure. This type of intervention engen-
ders belief in the inherent competence and resilience of family
and community. In such a context, an effective prevention or
management context for change is built through collaboration
across all systems, with due consideration of cultural, spiritual,
ethical, and policy issues.
The aim of this type of community intervention is to build
resilience that is sustainable over time with reduced long-term
professional involvement. This approach is in stark contrast
with those interventions that are pre-planned or taken from
other settings in boilerplate form to impose on a different cul-
ture and context. Such boilerplate models have been shown over
time to be less successful than flexible approaches that embody
the culture and context of the target population.
Ethnic Cleansing and Subsequent Events
To appreciate our work in Kosovo, it is necessary to have
some understanding of the traumatic events that preceded our
collaboration. After numerous atrocities in the relationship
between Serbia and its former Yugoslav neighbors, NATO took
collective action to stabilize the situation, end the atrocities, and
protect the populations that had become the victims of genocide.
On March 24, 1999, NATO’s bombing campaign started, and
Kosovar Albanians fled to Macedonia because the Serbian mili-
tary was forcing entry into their homes. About 1 million people
were expelled from Kosovo within a few weeks (United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees, 2000). They traveled by foot,
car, wagon, or any other means that they could find during the
ethnic cleansing. Family and community connections extended
throughout the Kosovar community, across all the borders to
Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, and even the Presheva Valley
in southern Serbia. Each of the Albanian communities in these
areas welcomed the refugees with open hearts, minds, and
homes, according to the principles of Kosovar reciprocal hospi-
tality. The resilience inherent in both national and international
communities forged solidarity and community connectedness.
The Family itself and the Family and Community Links served
as the foundation for the survival of the group as a whole.
A study conducted during the postwar period (Cardozo, Agani,
Vergara, & Gotway, 2000) showed that 25% of the total popula-
tion above 15 years of age displayed the signs and symptoms of
post-traumatic stress disorder. Unsurprisingly, anxiety and
depression were also on the rise. The extreme stressors experi-
enced by much of the population during the war were magnified
by the corollary loss of the traditional network of social support.
Available professional resources for mental health services
across the country were at an extremely low level: 1 psychiatrist
per 100,000 inhabitants; 1 mental health nurse per 35,000 inhab-
itants; only 1 child psychiatrist; and only 5 psychologists with
clinical experience. There were no substance abuse and forensic
services. These shortages of human resources were rendered
even more severe by the fact that Kosovar mental health profes-
sionals were burdened, of course, by their efforts to safeguard
their own families, who often had also been refugees and who
were trying to reconstruct ordinarily expectable conditions of
life.
This situation of a highly traumatized population in combina-
tion with a severe lack of human and institutional resources in
the formal mental health service system drove the need for the
development of innovative mental health interventions based on
the specific community resources of the Kosovar population, in
particular extended family structures, and mutual solidarity.
Developing services based on the family was the natural and
culturally appropriate solution because the family serves as the
fundamental unit of care and support in Kosovar society.
A Society in Transition
Even without its recent history of forced displacement of
most of the population, Kosovo would be challenged to meet
the social and health needs of its population. Indeed, even with-
out the strains of political change per se after the fall of Com-
munism and the subsequent break-up of former Yugoslavia,
Kosovo was experiencing great need.
Kosovo has the youngest population in Europe. The data
from various sources confirm that over 50% of the total popula-
tion is below 25 years of age, and those below age 20 account
for over 40% of the population (UNFPA, 2005) 12
. Hence, simply
by demographics, there is a high risk of substance abuse, depen-
dence, and addiction in the population. The overall size of the
population is also expected to grow as today’s young people
enter their reproductive years. In effect, the population boom
that is seen today will produce another, likely even larger popu-
lation boom in the next decade (Mohanan, 2003).
Poverty is an enormous issue. The Balkan region is the most
economically distressed area of Europe, and Kosovo faces even
greater challenges than other countries in the region. In 2001,
the World Bank estimated that about 1 in 8 residents—250,000
people—lived in extreme poverty and in desperate need of social
assistance programs. About 3 in 8 residents were marginally
poor, bringing the overall poverty rate to 50%. The unemploy-
ment rate was staggering (more than 50%). The increasing pop-
ulation will certainly cause serious pressure in the already
strained labor market.
The Problem of Substance Abuse
A major disaster (such as the recent war) and unpredictable
or untimely losses are key risk factors for substance abuse
(Garrett & Landau, 2006). In this context, soon after the war
(in 2001), the WHO commissioned a research team—RAR
(Rapid Assessment and Response) on Drug Use and Young
People in Kosovo—to assess the prevalence and nature of sub-
stance abuse, identify obstacles and opportunities in relation to
early intervention, and recommend priorities for action. The
research team issued a series of findings:
140 AGANI, LANDAU, AND AGANI
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1. Drugs of all types, including heroin, were available
in Kosovo. (Drug trafficking routes pass through
Kosovo, from Central Asia through Eastern Europe
toward Russia.)
2. Among young people attending school, levels of
substance (alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs) use were
comparable with most European Union (EU) countries.
3. Among other groups of younger adults, levels of cannabis
and ecstasy (MDMA) use were comparable with most
EU countries.
4. The rate of heroin use among young adults was slightly
higher than in many EU countries.
5. The social, political, and economic conditions all pointed
toward the likelihood of a significant increase in problems
related to drug use among young people.
Users of dangerous substances are found in all social classes
and among people of varying educational background. Most
users live with their families, although they often hide their drug
use for as long as they can. Generally, the use of illicit substances
is strongly condemned by the heads of the family, with the result
that the use of illicit substances takes place outside the family
context, mostly within a peer group setting. Often, however,
when users become dependent and are under pressure to main-
tain their habit, substance use becomes primarily an individual
behavior. Some users sell drugs in order to raise money for their
own purchase of drugs, which can lead to involvement in the
criminal justice system. Even in these instances, however, drug
taking seldom results in exclusion from the family. Families com-
monly remain supportive even for dependent (heroin) users who
have serious difficulty in remaining socially integrated.
Ethnographic interviews with parents and youth in the KA-
DAH (Kosovar Attitudes Toward Drug Addictions and
HIV ⁄AIDS
13 ) project suggested that youth learn about substances
from their friends and the mass media (Brisson et al., 2004).
When parents do speak to their adolescent and adult children
about drugs, they often use scare tactics. An implication was
that a comprehensive and well-designed program to establish
increased communication between young people and parents
(and other key adults) would help to prevent drug problems. If
problems did arise, the family would then be available as a criti-
cal source for intervening, stimulating motivation for treatment,
and supporting recovery.
Of course, improved communication does not just happen.
The family unit plays a vital role in many aspects of life in Ko-
sovo, but new problems such as HIV infection and drugs are
difficult subjects for parents (and other adult figures) to talk
about with youth. Other professionals, including teachers and
health care providers, rarely talk with patients or students about
these risky behaviors, either. This hesitance is probably
based on a combination of factors: (a) the problem is denied;
(b) people do not know what to say or how to say it; (c) people
are concerned that talking about it will make it happen; (d)
there are so many other concrete problems to worry about (no
jobs, poverty, lack of educational opportunities, inconsistent
power and water supply, etc.) that it is easier to forget about
this additional problem.
The success of a multifamily psychoeducation program
with Bosnian families led to an ongoing project in Kosovo—the
Kosovar Family Professional Educational Collaborative
(KFPEC)—to develop community-based, resilience oriented,
family-centered training and services to foster recovery in the
war-torn region (Rolland & Weine, 2000). Over the past 5 years,
the KFPEC has shown that a family-focused community resil-
ience program can increase attendance and treatment compli-
ance of both patients and family members, even in the case of
serious mental illness (Weine et al., 2005).
The KADAH project interviews indicated that youth and
adults (teachers, parents) recognize alcohol and drugs as a seri-
ous and growing problem for the society. Many families or par-
ents want to be more informed and do something about the
situation, but currently there is no place to get information, and
education programs are minimal and uncoordinated.
Even amid the rapid rise in substance abuse, particularly
among young people, KADAH indicated that there were no ser-
vices for drug addiction in Kosovo. The only facilities available
were emergency services for life-threatening situations. These
emergencies were treated in the emergency room, but there was
no provision for specific substance abuse treatment to follow,
and patients were discharged with no long-term treatment or
planning. Without a facility available for acute detoxification,
addiction treatment, long-term healing, and recovery, the same
patients would inevitably return for emergency care time and
again. Because addiction is a chronic and intergenerational dis-
ease, it was likely that without intervention, generations of
addicted persons would follow. All of these factors pointed to
the urgent need for the establishment of substance abuse ser-
vices.
In this context, Weine et al. (2005) documented the effects of
a psycho-educational multiple-family group program for fami-
lies in postwar Kosovo who had members with severe mental ill-
ness. A project was developed by the Kosovar American
professional collaborative (KFPEC) to focus on this issue. The
subjects were 30 families of people with severe mental illnesses
living in two cities in Kosovo. All subjects participated in multi-
ple-family groups and received family home visits. The program
documented medication compliance, number of psychiatric hos-
pitalizations, family mental health services use, among other
indicators, for the year prior to the groups and the first year of
the groups.
All the families attended an average of 5.5 (out of 7) meet-
ings, and 93% of the families attended four or more meetings.
After a year, there were multiple positive changes: decreased
hospitalization (p< .0001); increased medication compliance
(p< .0001); increased use of combined oral and depot medica-
tions (p< .0005); and increased use of mental health services
by family members (p< .05). These findings again suggested
that a family and community approach would be effective in
Kosovar society.
LINC Community Resilience
The Approach. The Linking Human Systems (LINC)
Community Resilience model assumes that individuals, families,
and communities are inherently competent and resilient, and
that with appropriate support and encouragement, they can
access individual and collective strengths that will allow them to
COMMUNITY-BUILDING BEFORE, DURING, AND AFTER TIMES OF TRAUMA 141
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transcend their loss (Landau, 2005, 2007)
14 . For the human spirit
to prevail and be perpetuated across generations, we need to be
able to draw on our mutual biological, psychological, social,
and spiritual resources. LINC Community Resilience extends
the concept of resilience to the level of community, encouraging
people to view themselves as competent in the face of over-
whelming circumstances (Landau, 2005, 2007; Landau & Saul,
2004; Landau, Garrett, et al., 2000).
This competence can be nurtured by helping people regain a
sense of connection with (a) one another; (b) those who came
before them; (c) daily patterns, rituals, and stories that impart
spiritual meaning; and (d) tangible resources within their com-
munity. Rather than imposing artificial support infrastructures,
LINC interventions engage respected community members to
act as natural agents for change. The inherent resilience in indi-
viduals, families, and communities allows them to overcome
tragedy and ensure that future generations survive and are
strengthened by the hardship they endure. LINC Community
Resilience draws on this capacity to heal. LINC is intended for
intervention in communities that have experienced rapid, unti-
mely, and unpredictable transitions or loss. This model has been
applied to communities around the world, including Kosovo.
Helping families and communities to harness their inherent resil-
ience and optimize the use of their resources minimizes the
scope of damage in the immediate wake of the trauma and the
years to follow (Landau, 2007).
LINC interventions employ existing community resources,
rather than installing artificial support infrastructures or impos-
ing generic prescriptions for community health. They leave the
ultimate decision making to the people whose lives will be most
affected by the changes that are instituted. Participating profes-
sionals are responsible for providing the context and skills that
will allow communities to access the resilience of their ancestors
and of their cultural and spiritual histories. This approach
allows professionals to intervene effectively without becoming
embedded in communities or intruding on their privacy. As a
result, the solutions that emerge are culturally appropriate and
sustainable.
The practical aspects of resilience in the community are
assessed in order to determine what resources are available,
whether people are aware of them, and how they are being used.
The clinician assesses how the transitional pathway has been
disrupted and whether themes of resilience are being mobilized.
LINC interventions draw on a variety of assessment techniques,
including a number of maps: geographic and sociological maps,
and maps that elucidate important transitions within the com-
munity. In the course of completing the maps, stories emerge
that shed light on current events and transitions and on the
community’s ways of confronting their problems. Often the
practical task of constructing maps helps to diffuse blame and
anger and thus to make room for more constructive interactions
that draw on a full range of resources and strengths.
Family and Community Links. LINC community inter-
ventions rely on community members to serve as Family and
Community Links. They serve in all communities, but they are
especially effective in those that are highly educated, sophisti-
cated, or composed of traditional extended families and clans,
where outside intervention is neither invited nor welcomed (e.g.,
Kosovar society). Although such communities might solicit
some form of intervention in a crisis, they tend to drop out as
soon as the immediate crisis is resolved. Groups that work with
a community link stay connected long after the crisis has passed
and do not drop out (Landau, 2005, 2007; Landau et al., 2008).
Coaching natural change agents to be Family and Commu-
nity Links allows the tradition, strength, pride, and privacy of
the group to remain intact. The Family and Community Links
initiate, maintain, and sustain change long after the outside
‘‘experts’’ have departed. Ideally, Family and Community Links
should be respected members of their communities who can
communicate effectively with community leaders and with grass
roots community members, their families, and their natural sup-
port systems. They should be flexible around community issues,
unallied with any particular faction, and effective without
engendering resentment or opposition from others.
Because the Family and Community Links’ ability to convene
representatives from all levels of the community is critical to the
success of LINC interventions, it is important to avoid selecting
leaders who cannot garner broad support or who might derail
the process for their own aggrandizement. Spurious leaders do
not empower the community so that residents experience new or
renewed competence and confidence; rather, they sustain their
efforts only to the point of personal gain. Often they are given
the position because of their convincing and forceful presence,
inevitably resulting in failure of the intervention if not immedi-
ately, then in the longer term.
The LINC Community Resilience model is a powerful tool for
propagating and sustaining change in communities that have
undergone rapid and untimely transition, whatever its cause. It
has been applied in the prevention of substance abuse,
HIV ⁄AIDS, domestic and community violence, and depression
and suicidality in widely diverse settings, most of which have
been in transition after political change or a related disaster (e.g.,
Argentina; Taiwan; South Africa; Romania; Kosovo; New York
City following September 11, 2001). The LINC model eschews
the notion that only professional ‘‘experts’’ can rescue a commu-
nity that is in dire straits; instead, it facilitates community mem-
bers’ achievement of long-term goals and independence, thus
empowering them to embrace healing, pride, and connectedness.
The LINC Community Resilience intervention is a three-stage
process. The work is performed primarily by the Family and
Family and Community Links, and communication across the
community is ensured when the Family and Community Links
have forged a healing matrix and the entire community (both
professional ancillary support system and natural support sys-
tem) is engaged in the endeavor.
Coming together to share their transitional pathway, history,
traditions, and current situation, the families and community
then take charge of their own future. They select Family and
Community Links who lead them to establish clear goals and to
turn these into small workable tasks with committed work
groups. Finally, the community takes over the process when the
outside professionals withdraw.
Application in Kosovo
After the war in Kosovo, there was a clear need to establish a
resource center to inform and educate families and the commu-
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nity about substance abuse. The situation was dire. Prior to the
war, there had been almost no drug use discovered in Kosovo.
After the war, rates of use, dependence, and addiction were
increasing at a dramatic rate. Because substance abuse had not
been a part of the culture, when people recognized a drug user
in their family, they felt isolated and ashamed and did not reach
out for help. The problem was often not recognized even within
the family, and for the first time family members were isolated
even from one another with their new secret.
It was hoped that a multifamily, resilience-based approach to
substance abuse treatment, similar to that implemented by mem-
bers of the LINC model teams in numerous other settings and
countries, would be welcomed and sustainable in Kosovo. From
May 2000, with the beginning of building a new mental health
system in Kosovo, the first author (Agani) worked collabora-
tively to combine the strengths, resources, and wisdom of the
Kosovar mental health professionals. Using the LINC Commu-
nity Resilience Model, these clinicians were trained in family
systems by KFPEC, so that the Kosovars could design their
new substance abuse delivery system.
The result of this 6-year collaboration was the establishment
of the Kosovo Addiction Treatment, Education and Resource
Center in the Department of Psychiatry of the University Clini-
cal Center of Kosovo in 2004. The most salient components of
the LINC Community Resilience Program used in this center
were: local multicultural competencies; awareness of their own
values, strengths, themes, scripts, biases, and prejudices; and the
use of their own skills (concreteness, genuineness, and self-dis-
closure) to build a trusting relationship so the client and family
could share their stories toward building sustainable recovery.
The initial step in applying LINC model in Kosovo was elicit-
ing family and community scripts, themes, and strengths; then
identifying goals, and applying the strengths as resources to
achieve the goals. The main strengths and resources identified
were: strong family values, loyalty, and closeness; protection
and safety in the extended family; valuing children and youth as
the future of the nation; adaptability, flexibility, and survival
skills; solidarity in help to communities; religion and religious
tolerance; education; altruism and caring for others; general
enthusiasm and optimism; and organizational skills and leader-
ship.
The LINC process focuses on accessing and using all avail-
able resources, which are matched to the goals and tasks. In the
Kosovar situation, strong emphasis was placed on mobilizing
the strength of extended-family connectedness, strong family
values, and a sense of unity rather than division to resolve the
overwhelming grief. The Family and Community Links encour-
aged the families to talk about their grief, rather than storing it
for generations to come. They encouraged members of their
own nuclear and extended family to talk about loss and grief
and any stress. They then asked each family to spread the mes-
sage to other families and to join together to talk on a commu-
nity scale.
In this way, the Kosovar inherent spirit of altruism and car-
ing for others was applied along with their strong organizational
skills and leadership to take care of all the families and to
rebuild community resources and new services. During the pro-
cess, the families were reconnected so that those with more
resources were able to care for those with less. One of the other
core values in the Kosovar community is the importance of chil-
dren. By reconnecting the community in recognition of the
importance of caring for children and youth and enhancing their
education, all were able to realize that they could build a strong,
caring, and connected nation despite the appalling trauma that
they had survived.
Conclusions
Toward this grand goal, both Kosovar and international
mental health professionals united in re-building communities
and initiating an enlightened community-based system of men-
tal health services after extraordinary national trauma. The
LINC Community Resilience model and KFPEC provided
professional software for a contemporary model of mental
health services in Kosovo grounded in indigenous resources
and family and community resilience. This approach gave
hope to overburdened Kosovar mental health professionals
that they could in fact achieve effective and efficient mental
health services.
The family-focused, community-based LINC method evolved
from many years of experience in mental health and substance
abuse prevention, treatment, and clinical research, including sev-
eral U.S. federal and state research grants (Landau, Garrett,
et al., 2000; Landau et al., 2004, 2008; Tuttle et al., 2004). Using
the results from recent projects in Kosovo and other war-torn
countries in the Balkans, the method was adapted and modified
appropriately for the Kosovar situation. Accordingly, the LINC
project in Kosovo stands as a model for community-based, cul-
turally sensitive international cooperation in a time of national
recovery from trauma.
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