Pre-conference Workshop 5

Title:
Providing mental health services in humanitarian settings

Theme:
Disaster psychiatry and shelter in the Netherlands

Speaker:
Peter Ventevogel and Pim Scholte

Time:
09:00 - 12:30 hrs

 

 

Additional workshop information:

Over the past decades armed conflicts and natural disasters have resulted in an unprecedented increase of the number of humanitarian crises and of displacement of affected populations. United Nations and non-governmental agencies have developed various mechanisms to address the associated mental health and psychosocial problems. Intervention approaches take a human rights, public mental health, and /or strengths-based perspective, while considering cultural variety and unstable living conditions. During this workshop these approaches will be discussed, introduced by the presentation of an overview of current humanitarian crises and what is known about prevailing mental health issues. Psychological consequences of violence, loss and forced displacement will theoretically be viewed from a sociocultural perspective, addressing, a.o., poverty and the concepts of social ecology, syndemics, identity, and morality. Participants will be invited to actively brainstorm about possible intervention approaches. They will learn about the IASC intervention pyramid for multilayered interventions for mental health and psychosocial support in humanitarian crisis, considerations around community-based approaches and low-intensity transdiagnostic intervention methods.