18 March 2020
WHO and public health authorities around the world are acting to contain the COVID-19 outbreak. However, this time of crisis is generating stress throughout the population. The considerations presented in this document have been developed by the WHO Department of Mental Health and S...ubstance Use as a series of messages that can be used in communications to support mental and psychosocial well-being in different target groups during the outbreak.
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This Guide responds to requests from practitioners and country teams who have learned about the Nurturing care framework and want to understand how to adapt health and nutrition services to be supportive of nurturing care and strengthen caregivers’ capacity.
The purpose of adding the books to the website of MCAI for download, is to make this life-saving, up-to-date information available to all who need it. Fill in a short registration field and you can download the pdf-files.
If you work in a hospital in a low income country - providing free care - y...ou are probably intitled to FREE copies of these books. MCAI will send them to you, all you have to do is to read our Flyer and fill in the request form.
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Including a Tool to Assess the Adolescent Health and Development Component in Pre-Service Education of Health-Care Providers
Social distancing is the deliberate increasing of physical space between people to stop or slow down the spread of a highly contagious illness. It is a strategy sometimes recommended by public health officials during pandemics. For mental health professionals, the challenges that accompany social di...stancing can place significant roadblocks to daily work. Some agencies and organizations may struggle to continue to provide critical services while also protecting employees’ health.
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This manual is addressed to health care providers dealing with Mycobacterium ulcerans disease (Buruli ulcer). The manual aims to achieve a better understanding of the disease, its clinical presentation and its surgical management. The manual is aimed particularly at district health care providers. A... comprehensive protocol, adapted to each form and stage of the disease, is presented together with comments on the levels of resources and capabilities necessary
to shorten the length of treatment, to prevent complications and to minimize undesired sequelae and thus to obtain the best possible outcome for each patient. Some sections include advice relevant to surgeons (e.g. relating to bone infection). However, the level to which particular comments are intended to apply should be clear from the context.
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A stated objective of WHO’s European Mental Health Action Plan 2013–2020 is to ensure better information and knowledge for service planning, development, monitoring and evaluation, including requesting Member States to report on the indicators in the Plan.
Progress towards achieving the int...ernationally agreed mental health objectives and targets is monitored in the periodic WHO Mental Health Atlas, which collates global information on mental health policies, resources and services.
This booklet provides a snapshot of the situation in countries in the WHO European region with regard to a number of core mental health targets and indicators, derived from the WHO’s Mental Health Atlas 2017.
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Indiscriminate attacks on health care have contributed to an epic humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen. A new report tracks these attacks in the hope of holding perpetrators on all sides accountable.
It details how both Houthi forces—with their use of wide-area impact weapons—and the Saudi-Emir...ati coalition—with their aerial attacks—have flagrantly disregarded the special status of health facilities and personnel in conflict zones.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has led to large increases in healthcare waste, straining under resourced healthcare facilities and exacerbating environmental impacts from solid waste. This report quantifies the additional COVID-19 healthcare waste generated, describes current healthcare waste management syst...ems and their deficiencies, and summarizes emerging best practices and solutions to reduce the impact of waste on human and environmental health. The recommendations included in the report build on actions in the WHO manifesto for a healthy recovery from COVID-19: prescriptions and actionables for a healthy and green recovery. They target the global, national and facility levels to promote a “win–win” scenario for COVID-19 PPE use, testing and vaccinations that are safe and support environmental sustainability.
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This briefing note summarises key mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) considerations in relation to the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.
BMC Health Services Research 14(1):42 · January 2014
The objective of this international comparative study is to describe and compare the mental health policies in seven countries of Eastern Europe that share their common communist history: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Poland..., Romania, and Slovakia.
The burden of totalitarian history still influences many areas of social and economic life, which also has to be taken into account in mental health policy. We may observe that after twenty years of health reforms and reforms of health reforms, the transition of the mental health systems still continues. In spite of many reform efforts in the past, a balance of community and hospital mental health services has not been achieved in this part of the world yet.
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The World Health Organization Assessment Instrument for Mental Health Systems (WHO-AIMS) was used to collect information on the mental health system in Ghana for the year 2011. The goal of collecting this information is to improve the mental health system and to provide a baseline for monitoring the... change. This will enable Ghana to develop information based mental health plans with clear base-line information and targets. It will also be useful to monitor progress in implementing reform policies, providing community services, and involving users, families and other stakeholders in mental health promotion, prevention and rehabilitation.
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This article describes experiences in implementing a community mental health and development project in a rural district in southern India, including the position of persons with mental illness when the project was initiated, the challenges faced and the strategies that were developed to overcome th...ese challenges. The authors conclude that when services are locally available, persons with mental illness can be treated and rehabilitated within their own community. They can live with dignity and their rights are respected. There is a great need for inclusion of persons with mental illness in the existing developmental activities and in disabled persons’ organisations.
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This brief document aims to provide a framework for WHO assistance in this area.
This guidance is targeted to primary health care policy-makers and only addresses issues relevant for primary health care providers. It has been prepared on the basis of a systematic review of the best available evidence and emergent country practices in response to the COVID-19 outbreak in the WHO ...European Region. It will be updated on a regular basis as new information becomes available.
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The International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and
Allied Professions (IACAPAP) aims to promote the mental health and
development of children and adolescents worldwide. It seeks to achieve
this by contributing to the training and professional development of the
child and adole...scent mental health professionals by disseminating up-todate
and high-quality information through its publications, organization
of biennial international congresses, and study groups. IACAPAP has a
long tradition of publishing monographs released to coincide with the
congresses, with the first one published in 1970.
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War Trauma Foundation strengthens mental health care and psychosocial support through capacity building and development and dissemination of expertise through the implementation of programmes in (post) conflict areas. We develop and evaluate new methods in close cooperation with (local) partner orga...nisations ensuring the inclusion of cultural and context aspects as well as long term sustainability. A couple of programmes will always be highlighted on our website.
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The aim of the Technical Brief is to offer guidance to education professionals on how to integrate Mental Health and Psychosocial Support into Education in Emergencies programming. An overview of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support activities that can be implemented in Education in Emergencies co...ntexts is detailed, in line with the MHPSS Minimum Service Package. Country examples and case studies are featured.
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Across the Western Pacific Region COVID-19 is placing enormous strain on health and economic systems apart from direct threats to personal health safety and livelihood the pandemic also has significant implications on mental health and psychosocial well being adversity is an established risk factor ...for mental health problems thus the impact of COVID-19 on mental health is expected to be large diverse and far reaching mental health and psychosocial support mhpss are essential components of a public health response to COVID-19 this guidance note provides 10 activities that may be integrated in national COVID-19 response and mitigation plans
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The global burden of disease due to mental disorders continues to rise, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). In addition to causing a large proportion of morbidity, mental disorders – especially severe mental disorders (SMD) – are linked with poorer health outcomes and increase...d mortality. SMD are defined as a group of conditions that include moderate to severe depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. People with SMD have a two to three times higher average mortality compared to the general population, which translates to a 10-20 year reduction in life expectancy. While people with SMD do have higher rates of death due to unnatural causes (accidents, homicide, or suicide) than the general population, the
majority of deaths amongst people with SMD are attributable to physical health conditions, both
non-communicable and communicable.
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