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Provision of mental health and psychosocial support services to health workers and community members in conflict-affected Northwest Syria: a mixed-methods study
BACKGROUND: Northwest Syria (NWS) is a conflict area with challenging political, economic, demographic and social dynamics. The region has a high number of internally displaced persons with increasingly disrupted delivery of basic services, including healthcare. Mental health needs have been increas...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10548701/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37794393 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13031-023-00547-4 |
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author | Bou-Orm, Ibrahim R. Moussallem, Marianne Karam, Joelle deLara, Manuel Varma, Vinod Diaconu, Karin Apaydin, Murat Can Birand Van den Bergh, Rafael Ager, Alastair Witter, Sophie |
author_facet | Bou-Orm, Ibrahim R. Moussallem, Marianne Karam, Joelle deLara, Manuel Varma, Vinod Diaconu, Karin Apaydin, Murat Can Birand Van den Bergh, Rafael Ager, Alastair Witter, Sophie |
author_sort | Bou-Orm, Ibrahim R. |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Northwest Syria (NWS) is a conflict area with challenging political, economic, demographic and social dynamics. The region has a high number of internally displaced persons with increasingly disrupted delivery of basic services, including healthcare. Mental health needs have been increasing in the region while the infrastructure and capacity of the health sector has been negatively affected by the conflict. This study aimed to explore the provision of mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) services to communities in NWS (including healthcare workers) and to assess the experiences of beneficiaries with MHPSS services. METHODS: The study followed a mixed-methods research design that included qualitative and participatory methods (44 semi-structured interviews and a group model building workshop with 15 participants) as well as a survey with 462 beneficiaries. RESULTS: Findings suggested an improvement of MHPSS services in the region over the last few years due to the creation of a specific Technical Working Group for MHPSS that contributed to assessment of community needs and support of the MHPSS response. The key elements of this response were: (1) training non-specialized health workers to address the shortage in specialized providers; (2) securing funding and coordination of services between different organizations; and (3) addressing gaps in the availability and geographical distribution of other needed resources, such as medicines. While those elements contributed to improving access to services and the quality of services—especially among health workers seeking MHPSS services—findings suggested gaps in the sustainability of services and a need to scale up those interventions in an integrated approach. CONCLUSION: The study findings add to the evidence base on the challenges in scaling up MHPSS interventions and their long-term sustainability concerns. Priority actions should address the intermittent funding of the MHPSS response, incorporate MHPSS outputs and outcomes in the reimbursement of routine services, improve coordination between health partners and non-health actors in order to expand the scope of MHPSS response, and address the inequitable availability of resources in the region. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10548701 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-105487012023-10-05 Provision of mental health and psychosocial support services to health workers and community members in conflict-affected Northwest Syria: a mixed-methods study Bou-Orm, Ibrahim R. Moussallem, Marianne Karam, Joelle deLara, Manuel Varma, Vinod Diaconu, Karin Apaydin, Murat Can Birand Van den Bergh, Rafael Ager, Alastair Witter, Sophie Confl Health Research BACKGROUND: Northwest Syria (NWS) is a conflict area with challenging political, economic, demographic and social dynamics. The region has a high number of internally displaced persons with increasingly disrupted delivery of basic services, including healthcare. Mental health needs have been increasing in the region while the infrastructure and capacity of the health sector has been negatively affected by the conflict. This study aimed to explore the provision of mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) services to communities in NWS (including healthcare workers) and to assess the experiences of beneficiaries with MHPSS services. METHODS: The study followed a mixed-methods research design that included qualitative and participatory methods (44 semi-structured interviews and a group model building workshop with 15 participants) as well as a survey with 462 beneficiaries. RESULTS: Findings suggested an improvement of MHPSS services in the region over the last few years due to the creation of a specific Technical Working Group for MHPSS that contributed to assessment of community needs and support of the MHPSS response. The key elements of this response were: (1) training non-specialized health workers to address the shortage in specialized providers; (2) securing funding and coordination of services between different organizations; and (3) addressing gaps in the availability and geographical distribution of other needed resources, such as medicines. While those elements contributed to improving access to services and the quality of services—especially among health workers seeking MHPSS services—findings suggested gaps in the sustainability of services and a need to scale up those interventions in an integrated approach. CONCLUSION: The study findings add to the evidence base on the challenges in scaling up MHPSS interventions and their long-term sustainability concerns. Priority actions should address the intermittent funding of the MHPSS response, incorporate MHPSS outputs and outcomes in the reimbursement of routine services, improve coordination between health partners and non-health actors in order to expand the scope of MHPSS response, and address the inequitable availability of resources in the region. BioMed Central 2023-10-04 /pmc/articles/PMC10548701/ /pubmed/37794393 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13031-023-00547-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Bou-Orm, Ibrahim R. Moussallem, Marianne Karam, Joelle deLara, Manuel Varma, Vinod Diaconu, Karin Apaydin, Murat Can Birand Van den Bergh, Rafael Ager, Alastair Witter, Sophie Provision of mental health and psychosocial support services to health workers and community members in conflict-affected Northwest Syria: a mixed-methods study |
title | Provision of mental health and psychosocial support services to health workers and community members in conflict-affected Northwest Syria: a mixed-methods study |
title_full | Provision of mental health and psychosocial support services to health workers and community members in conflict-affected Northwest Syria: a mixed-methods study |
title_fullStr | Provision of mental health and psychosocial support services to health workers and community members in conflict-affected Northwest Syria: a mixed-methods study |
title_full_unstemmed | Provision of mental health and psychosocial support services to health workers and community members in conflict-affected Northwest Syria: a mixed-methods study |
title_short | Provision of mental health and psychosocial support services to health workers and community members in conflict-affected Northwest Syria: a mixed-methods study |
title_sort | provision of mental health and psychosocial support services to health workers and community members in conflict-affected northwest syria: a mixed-methods study |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10548701/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37794393 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13031-023-00547-4 |
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