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IASC Guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Work in Emergencies: Implications for Social Work |
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IASC Guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Work in Emergencies: Implications for Social Work
Contribution by Martha Bragin, Associate Professor,Hunter College School of Social Work
The City University of New York
A new set of guidelines on mental health and psychosocial support in emergency settings was launched in fall 2007 by the Interagency Standing Committee (IASC) an international body promotes the coordination of humanitarian assistance. The guidelines place culturally competent social service delivery, community ownership of decision making, participatory processes and human rights at the center of their focus.
What is the IASC?
The Inter Agency Standing Committee (IASC), that issued the guidelines, was established in response to General Assembly resolution 46/182 and affirmed by Resolution 48/57 in the mandate to coordinate humanitarian action around the world and establish and advocate for best practice in humanitarian assistance. Members include United Nations agencies, the Federation of Red Cross/Red Crescent Societies, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and consortia of international and national NGOs.
Why guidelines on mental health and psychosocial support in emergencies?
In recent years, natural disasters and armed conflict have called forth large scale emergency humanitarian action in both global north and south. The IASC became concerned that in the absence of guidelines as to how community resilience should be supported, government agencies and humanitarian actors have been the cause of and not the solution to, psychosocial distress. There have been all too many reported instances in which outsiders have been permitted to practice in situations of extreme gravity and do harm through importing external methods of coping, while marginalizing rather than strengthening indigenous systems. There have also been widely reported instances of failure to provide for the basic rights and dignity of citizens through lack of collaboration with community based organizations and leaders.
Therefore the IASC commissioned a task force to develop a set of guidelines on mental health and psychosocial support in emergency settings.
What are the key features of the guidelines?
The guidelines consist of 25 points in a poster, accompanied by 25 action sheets that operationalize the implementation, and a short “Do No Harm” slide show that attempts to target harmful practices and offer the alternative of beneficial ones. click here to download the file
The guidelines identify community mobilization and participation as the core of mental health and psychosocial support, and emphasize the promotion of and compliance with human rights standards.
They call for:
• community ownership and control of emergency response in all sectors
• establishment of participatory monitoring and evaluation systems to insure that this control is operationalized
• social and cultural norms to be considered in every aspect of humanitarian action from food and nutrition support, to the provision of shelter, water and sanitation
• culturally appropriate specialized care to insure that people suffering from severe mental illness and neurological impairment are treated with dignity.
What are the implications for NADD?
Study of the guidelines falls under the purview of the International Task Force and Disaster Work Group of NADD.
The guidelines suggest that it is community and agency based practice that should take the lead in empowering communities to help themselves in time of crisis, thereby promoting resilience and minimizing the accumulation of harmful experiences that create risk. They call for social work practice, values and ethics to be at the forefront of emergency action. However, the question of whether the guidelines are in fact in line with social work values, ethics and best practice research remains to be studied.
Study will also be required to understand whether and how the guidelines are effective in this regard, what pedagogical strategies meet the needs of social workers who practice in emergency settings, and how to engage community members in participatory research, monitoring and evaluation so that they may emerge as lead actors in their own behalf and inform further research and practice.
Further work is needed to field test the effectiveness of the guidelines through case studies and clinical trials.
If they seem relevant, they could be included in the curricula of classes in International Social Work and Social Work in Disasters.
A poster summary of the standards is available here.
click here to download the file
You can also download the standards in English here.
click here to download the file
For versions in other languages see
http://www.humanitarianinfo.org/iasc/content/products/default.asp
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