The mental health needs of refugees were brought into focus at a workshop, organized by WHO, where lessons were shared by refugee-receiving countries and strategies discussed on how to handle the rising numbers of refugees arriving from the war in Ukraine. Experts from receiving countries shared best practices for the provision of urgently needed mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) to arriving refugees.
Held under the aegis of the pan-European Mental Health Coalition and as a follow up to the high-level meeting on health and migration held in Istanbul in March 2022, participants included members of civil society, international organizations and mental health and migration experts, members of the refugee community and representatives of refugee-receiving countries as well as WHO representatives working on the mental health response.
“The Russian aggression in Ukraine came as a great shock to Poland but also the whole region,” said Poland’s Deputy Minister of Health, Waldemar Kraska. He noted that initially support had focused on covering refugees’ basic needs, but that now the focus needed to be on addressing mental health, particularly for the “young mothers and children who have to flee knowing that their husbands and fathers are still in Ukraine, fighting.”
Supporting mental health
War, armed conflict and other man-made or natural disasters cause profound distress and can in some cases ignite or inflame existing mental health conditions. Most people will recover without help; however, an estimated 1 in 5 people will have a mental health condition in the next 10 years, and 1 in 10 will have a severe condition like post-traumatic stress disorder or psychosis.
This makes good quality MHPSS essential for the recovery of countries affected by war. For Viktoria Mariniuk, who works for the League for Mental Health in Slovakia and herself had to leave Ukraine, good MHPSS is nothing without the involvement of the people affected: “Let me tell you about the right MHPSS: people want to be listened to, and in most cases no medical procedures and no medications are needed.”
Participants at the workshop agreed that refugee populations needed to be better engaged in future MHPSS work. Furthermore, it was agreed that mental health support sensitive to refugees needed to be integrated into national emergency preparedness, response, and recovery plans ahead of an emergency taking place.
Best practice examples included the creation of easy to access MHPSS service desks in Slovakia and the loosening of regulations to allow Ukrainians with relevant qualifications to provide mental health support for refugees without needing to be re-licensed in Poland.
Refugees fleeing Ukraine
Millions of people have been forcibly displaced since the onset of the war in Ukraine. Over 7 million refugees have fled to neighbouring countries and beyond. Millions more are displaced within the country's borders. About 4,4 million refugees registered for Temporary Protection or similar national protection schemes in Europe (as of 25 Oct 2022).
WHO experts were deployed to Ukraine and the surrounding countries, within days of the war starting, to address immediate health needs and to begin the process of coordinating mental health and psychosocial support. This involved informing refugees arriving with pre-existing mental health conditions where to get help, whether psychotropic medication or counselling.
WHO is making MHPSS resources available, coordinating MHPSS and providing surge support. Supporting countries in this effort is one of the main priorities of the pan-European Mental Health Coalition, which will hold its second meeting on 23-24 November 2022 to continue the work begun at this meeting.
*This article was amended on 17 November 2022 to correct the technically inaccurate phrase Refugees in Ukraine to Refugees fleeing Ukraine