An Indigenous Community Mental Health Service on the Tohono O’odham (Papago) Indian Reservation: Seventeen Years Later

This article discusses a clinic run by the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation. Working primarily from a crisis intervention model the clinic is decreasing the stigma attached to mental illness. Its typical cases involve school drop outs, sex abusers, alcohol problems and suicide. The clinic successfully combines a staff of Western professionals with traditional medicine persons. Problems arise in that city hospitals offer little help due to their lack of knowledge of these people.