Knowledge Hub
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06/01/2020
Phone-based data collection in a refugee community under COVID-19 lockdown
This paper presents a randomised controlled trial of the Caregiver Support Intervention, with 480 war-affected refugee caregivers in Lebanon. Three weeks before the second wave of endline assessment, lockdown began in Lebanon, abruptly ending all field activities. The paper describes the successful completion of the endline assessment entirely by telephone, with all research team members working from home. The system described here was developed in 5 days and implemented in 7 days.
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08/26/2020
Planning the scale up of brief psychological interventions using theory of change
A large mental health treatment gap exists among conflict-affected populations, and Syrian refugees specifically. Promising brief psychological interventions for conflict-affected populations exist such as the World Health Organization’s Problem Management Plus (PM+) and the Early Adolescent Skills for Emotions (EASE) intervention, however, there is limited practical guidance for countries of how these interventions can be taken to scale. The aim of this study was to unpack pathways for scaling up PM+ and EASE for Syrian refugees.
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02/01/2020
Stigma reduction interventions for children and adolescents in low- and middle-income countries: Systematic review of intervention strategies
Stigmatisation and discrimination are common worldwide, and have profound negative impacts on health and quality of life. Research, albeit limited, has focused predominantly on adults. There is a paucity of literature about stigma reduction strategies concerning children and adolescents, with evidence especially sparse for low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). This systematic review synthesised child-focused stigma reduction strategies in LMIC, and compared these to adult-focused interventions.
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12/01/2020
Trajectories of psychological symptoms and resilience in conflict-affected children in low- and middle-income countries
Longitudinal studies on children's and adolescents' psychological reactions to conflict-related traumatic events in low- and middle-income countries are scarce. This study aimed to analyze children's and adolescents' responses to conflict-related potentially traumatic events (PTEs) and the impact of the number of different types of PTEs on psychological symptoms and resilience over time.
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11/26/2020
Scaling up mental health care and psychosocial support in low-resource settings: a roadmap to impact
Despite global attention to mental health and psychosocial support services and a growing body of evidence-support interventions, few mental health services have been established at a regional or national scale in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). There are myriad challenges and barriers ranging from testing interventions that do not target priority needs of populations or policymakers to interventions that cannot achieve adequate coverage to decrease the treatment gap in LMIC. This study proposes a ‘roadmap to impact’ process that guides planning for interventions to move from the research space to the implementation space.
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12/09/2020
Participation by conflict-affected and forcibly displaced communities in humanitarian healthcare responses: A systematic review
Community participation in health responses in humanitarian crises is increasingly promoted by humanitarian actors to support adoption of measures that are relevant and effective to local needs. This study aimed to understand the role of community participation in humanitarian health responses for conflict-affected populations (including forcibly displaced populations) in low- and middle-income countries and the barriers and facilitators to community participation in healthcare responses. Using a systematic review methodology, it followed the PRISMA protocol, and searched four bibliographic databases for publications reporting peer-reviewed primary research.
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01/08/2021
A call for greater conceptual clarity in the field of mental health and psychosocial support in humanitarian settings
When the Interagency Standing Committee (IASC) adopted the composite term mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) and published its guidelines for MHPSS in emergency settings in 2007, it aimed to build consensus and strengthen coordination among relevant humanitarian actors. The term MHPSS offered an inclusive tent by welcoming the different terminologies, explanatory models and intervention methods of diverse actors across several humanitarian sectors (e.g., health, protection, education, nutrition). Since its introduction, the term has become well-established within the global humanitarian system. However, it has also been critiqued for papering over substantive differences in the intervention priorities and conceptual frameworks that inform the wide range of interventions described as MHPSS. Our aims are to clarify those conceptual frameworks, to argue for their essential complementarity and to illustrate the perils of failing to adequately consider the causal models and theories of change that underlie our interventions.
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