Cultural affirmation and the protection of emotional well-being

This article examines the impact of the Balkan conflict on the culture and emotional health of a community of Serbian Australians. It discusses how an intimate reconnection with their cultural identity, Serbian Australians, without formal mental health service supports, managed the complex and dynamic interplay between homeland events, mainstream media reports, ethnonational bonds, and mental health issues in Australia. Ethnographic techniques revealed that although the Balkan conflict bared a multitude of potent health and emotional concerns for Serbian Australians, their coping was enhanced by an intimate sense of belonging and reassociation with their historical, religious, cultural, and national identities. By engaging in spiritual connections with their culture and ethnicity, the transglobal effects of the Balkan war on Serbians in Australia revealed that mental health and healing could no longer be seen as a localized phenomenon. It must also be seen as something that transcends the nations and communities in which people live.