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- using cocaine (4.7 percent) than the U.S. mainland (two percent);
- Marijuana is used by a slightly higher percentage of people in Hawaii (14.4 percent) than on the U.S. mainland (13 percent); and
- The current non-medical use of sedatives is also slightly higher in Hawaii (1.2 percent) compared to the U.S. mainland (0.7 percent). 151/
Federally-Funded Programs
The Hale Ola Project is a service and research effort supported by federal funds from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Administration for Native Americans (under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). 152/ The Project is administered in Hawaii by Alu Like, Inc., and was initiated because it was found that "Western approaches to therapy and mental health care are not entirely suitable or appropriate for non-Western, including native Hawaiian, individuals with mental or emotional problems." 153/
Hale Ola o Ho'opakolea is a recent effort to test and demonstrate the effectiveness of an alternate and culturally-sensitive approach to meeting the mental health care needs of native Hawaiians. The three-year project (entering its third and final year at the beginning of 1983) is located on the Wai'anae Coast.
According to the Project Director, the Hale Ola Project is a unique effort in several respects. It represents the first time that a service center has been established to utilize a culturally-sensitive approach to service delivery targeted for native Hawaiians with mental, emotional, and related problems. It is a center that employe qualified service staff drawn from the Wai'anae Coast communities to provide counseling, referral, follow-up, training, and information gathering in a manner appropriate to native Hawaiians. Informal approaches to care-giving assistance are emphasized and flexibility is maintained with regard to setting the time and frequency with which care is provided. Hale Ola also represents a unique effort to identify, recruit , and coordinate the variety of informal care-givers and natural healers who are present in every community and offer a wide range of services generally uncatalogued and unacknowledged by professional service agencies. Hale Ola is working to link formal and informal sources of assistance in order to create a network of care for individuals with various kinds of problems and service needs. Finally, Hale Ola is unique in its organizational character; it was initiated by Wai'anae Coast community groups and it continues to be directly guided by and responsible to a community-based administrative committee consisting of residents and service agency staff.
The Hale Ola Project has also been, responsible for sponsoring cultural research efforts that seek to elicit specific kinds of information directly applicable to culturally-sensitive service delivery. In particular, Hale Ola has formulated a community research program that consists of three main research efforts:
- A community survey of native Hawaiian perception and communication styles with regard to personal problems;
- A survey of informal care-givers and natural healers on the Wai'anae Coast; and
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