Around 1% of the world population is forcedly displaced, including more than 20 million refugees under the mandate of UNHCR, the refugee agency of the United Nations. Refugees have increased mental health needs due to 1) experiences they went through in the past, 2) daily stresses of refugee live and the breakdown of supportive networks, and 3) lack of prospects for the future and the loss of hope. Most of refugees live in low- income countries with limited resources for mental health care. The increased needs coupled with a lack of specialized resources has prompted humanitarian agencies to develop broad multi layered mental health responses that go beyond narrow clinical interventions. Within global refugee mental health, three important emerging practices can be distinguished: 1) community-based interventions to foster self-help and strengthen social connectedness; 2) scalable psychological interventions (including brief psychotherapies) that can be delivered by non-specialists after brief training and with supportive supervision; and 3) integration of mental health into general health care in refugee settings. This webinar will provide examples of these practices, critically analyse them and attempt to distill what the world can learn from approaches that were born out of necessity.
SPEAKER: Dr. Peter Ventevogel, M.D., Ph.D
Since 2013, he is the Senior Mental Health Officer with UNHCR, the refugee agency of the United Nations. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of ‘Intervention, Journal for Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Conflict Affected Areas’ and worked with the nongovernmental organisation HealthNet TPO. In 2016, he defended his doctoral dissertation ‘Borderlands of mental health: Explorations in medical anthropology, psychiatric epidemiology and health systems research in Afghanistan and
Burundi’.
MODERATOR: Mónica Ruiz-Casares
PhD, MSc, MA, LLB
Associate Professor
Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry
McGill University
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