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Mental health

Mental health

Fatima, who lives in the West Bank, has long term mental health issues after years of attacks and harassment from nearby settlers, who wish to establish ownership over the land. Caption
Fatima, who lives in the West Bank, has long term mental health issues after years of attacks and harassment from nearby settlers, who wish to establish ownership over the land.

The psychological impact of a humanitarian emergency can be severe.

Our teams provide emergency medical aid in catastrophes all over the world — armed conflicts, natural disasters, famines and epidemics.

However, for people who have lived through these traumatic events, survival goes beyond ensuring physical wellbeing.

Worldwide, around one in four people will suffer from a mental health problem during their lifetime, yet roughly 60 percent will not seek help.

These figures dramatically increase when factors such as violence, persecution, the need to flee, disasters or a lack of access to healthcare are involved.

For this reason, in 1998 MSF formally recognised the need to provide mental health and psychosocial care as part of our emergency work.

In 2022, our mental health teams provided 425,500 individual consultations across our projects.

Spotlight: Mental health crisis in Burkina Faso

At MSF's out-patient department in Batil refugee camp Gandhi Pant, a nurse, escorts a patient with a possible appendicitis to a waiting ambulance. 

Batil is one of three camps in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State sheltering at least 113,000 refugees who have crossed the border from Blue Nile state to escape fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the SPLM-North armed group. Refugees arrive at the camp with harrowing stories of being bombed out of their homes, or having their villages burned. The camps into which they have poured are on a vast floodplain, leaving many tents flooded and refugees vulnerable to disease. Mortality rates in Batil camp are at emergency levels, malnutrition rates are more than five times above emergency thresholds, and diarrhea and malarial cases are rising.

Help us prepare for the next emergency

Mental health: Key issues

People caught in the wake of a humanitarian crisis can suffer from debilitating depression and anxiety, including conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 

Many patients seen by MSF will have been separated from their families or witnessed the deaths of loved ones. Others may have been forced to flee, searching for shelter, supplies and safety. These events can immobilise people with depression and anxiety at a time when they need to take action for themselves and their families.

MSF mental health professionals are there to listen and support so that traumatic experiences do not come to define our patients' lives.

Mental healthcare forms a crucial part of our services for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malnutrition, sexual violence and disease outbreaks.

Our primary aim is to reduce people’s symptoms and improve their ability to function. Often this work is done by local counsellors specially trained by MSF, while our psychologists or psychiatrists provide technical support and clinical supervision. 

At the same time, specialised clinicians are available to treat severe mental illness. However, this accounts for a minority of the cases seen by MSF.

People seek mental health support for many reasons – the agonising loss of a child in an earthquake, the trauma of sexual violence, getting caught up in a conflict. MSF mental health professionals listen to their stories and focus on helping them find ways to cope and continue with their lives.

Being forced from home is a particular problem for people already suffering from mental health problems. They can lose access to existing treatment and routine care, which may cause them to develop further symptoms or more severe conditions.

However, treating people with existing serious conditions (such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, for example) remains a challenge for MSF teams, given the complexity of managing psychiatric medication and treatment. Increasing our capacity to treat these illnesses remains a priority for MSF.

Establishing mental healthcare programmes in emergencies is not straightforward, mainly when violence and trauma may be ongoing, or language and cultural barriers may prevent people from seeking support. Our community outreach teams increasingly play an essential part in tackling this.

It is often difficult to guarantee continuity of care in unstable and dangerous environments. However, the needs are high, and we are continuing to expand our mental health programmes.

For MSF's emergency response work to be carried out, there is another crucial issue: the mental health of our teams.

Often away from home for long periods, working under pressure and required to process traumatic events, humanitarian aid workers must also be given the professional support and headspace they need.

Local MSF staff will often come directly from the communities receiving our care. While this is useful for our teams to understand social and cultural issues better, it also means that these staff members are closer to the same traumatic events experienced by our patients. Our local staff, therefore, receive psychological support.

For international team members, coming home from an assignment is often the time when mental health support becomes the most necessary. Many struggle with the knowledge that, for their patients, returning home may not be an option. However, MSF remains committed to helping our staff re-adapt to their routines and process their experiences. 

Mental health: Key facts

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1 in 5

PEOPLE EXPERIENCE MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES DURING A HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCY

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425,500

MENTAL HEALTH CONSULTATIONS PROVIDED BY MSF TEAMS IN 2022

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54

COUNTRIES WHERE MSF PROVIDES MENTAL HEALTHCARE

Spotlight: Staff mental health

Mental health: News and stories