World Bank’s “Investing in Health”: Mental health services in situations of conflict, fragility, and violence: What to do?
Patricio V. Marquez, a World Bank lead health specialist, who heads the Global Tobacco Control Initiative at the World Bank Group, and Melanie Walker, senior adviser to the president and director of the World Bank Group’s Delivery Unit, discuss the importance of integrating mental health care into humanitarian and development responses. They write the provision of mental health and psychosocial support services “needs to be part of broad integrated platforms — population, community, and health care — that provide basic services and security, promote community and family support through participatory approaches, and strengthen coping mechanisms not only to improve people’s daily functioning and wellbeing, and protect the most vulnerable (e.g., women and children, adolescents, elderly, and those with severe mental illness) from further adversity, but also to empower the affected people to take charge of their lives as valuable members of society…” (11/1).