Mental health in humanitarian settings: shifting focus to care systems

Abstract

Mental health in low- and middle income countries has received increasing attention. This attention has shifted focus, roughly moving from demonstrating the burden of mental health problems, to establishing an evidence base for interventions, to thinking about care delivery frameworks. This paper reviews these trends specifically for humanitarian settings and discusses lessons learned. Notably, that mental health assessments need to go beyond measuring the impact of traumatic events on circumscribed psychiatric disorders; that evidence for effectiveness of interventions is still too weak and its focus too limited; and that development of service delivery in the context of instable community and health systems should be an area of key priority.

Keywords: Emergency; Humanitarian setting; Mental health; Psychosocial.