by M. Claire Greene, Samuel L. Likindikoki, Jessie K. K. Mbwambo and Wietse A. Tol July 2018
If you are consumed by worries, can you focus on your work? If you are overpowered by anger because of what they did to you, can you manage the challenges of life in a refugee camp? If you are too sad to get out of bed in the morning, do you have the energy to breastfeed? If you do not sleep because of nightmares, can you be an attentive caregiver? Such questions challenge us to look beyond the material and physical needs in humanitarian settings, and raise the importance of the mental health and psychosocial wellbeing of people affected by humanitarian emergencies. Research has shown that mental health and psychosocial wellbeing are important factors in successful programming in economic development and livelihoods, child development and education, protection and human rights, nutrition and, ultimately, individual and collective recovery from conflict and disaster. With regard to health, this can be summed up under the slogan ‘no health without mental health’.+ In this paper we describe opportunities for integrating mental health and psychosocial programming into humanitarian response, and discuss strategies for overcoming the challenges associated with introducing multi-sectoral interventions into existing systems.