ABSTRACT
Stress becomes a threat to mental health when it overwhelms the capacity of the victims to cope with their new situation by mastering their reactions – physical / functional / cognitive, emotional or psychological – generated by stress or when it creates behavioural disturbances. The primary health care network has a key role to play in the promotion of services related to mental health. The planned mental health response and related activities should definitively take into consideration the fact that each culture has its own way of elaborating psychosocial problems and its own way of dealing with them. Most of the traditionally minded women will not attend a health centre to discuss such problems, so it is usually necessary to rely on a team approach using outreach activities to find ways to break the social isolation of the raped victim.
