Addressing Mental Health as a Community Issue in El Salvador Mental health project offers a series of workshops to help the residents of Arcatao work through trauma. Creative Commons A couple watches as workers bury the bodies of people who died from COVID-19 in El Salvador. Six years ago, as U.S. members of the El Salvador Mental Health Project and the Association for the Development of El Salvador convened a meeting of people who had been health promoters during their countryâs twelve-year civil war (1980-1992), it immediately became clear that asking them to talk about their experiences as lay health care providers was going to be emotionally difficult.