Afghan mental health and psychosocial well-being: thematic review of four decades of research and interventions.

Background: Four decades of war, political upheaval, economic deprivation and forced displacement have profoundly affected both in-country and refugee Afghan populations.

Aims: We reviewed literature on mental health and psychosocial well-being, to assess the current evidence and describe mental healthcare systems, including government programmes and community-based interventions.

Method: In 2022, we conducted a systematic search in Google Scholar, PTSDpubs, PubMed and PsycINFO, and a hand search of grey literature ( = 214 papers).

Improving access to mental health care and psychosocial support within a fragile context: a case study from Afghanistan.

As one article in a series on Global Mental Health Practice, Peter Ventevogel and colleagues provide a case study of their efforts to integrate brief, practice-oriented mental health training into the Afghanistan health care system at a time when the system was being rebuilt from scratch.

Properties of the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25 (HSCL-25) and the Self-Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ-20) as screening instruments used in primary care in Afghanistan.

Background: Recent epidemiological studies in Afghanistan using mental health questionnaires yielded high prevalence rates for anxiety and depression.

Objectives: To explore the validity in the Afghan cultural context of two mental health questionnaires, the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25 (HSCL-25) and the Self-Reporting Questionnaire-20 (SRQ-20).

Methods: The two mental health questionnaires were compared against a 'gold standard' semi-structured psychiatric interview, the Psychiatric Assessment Schedule (PAS).

Psychiatry in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan's historic strategic position between the great civilisations of India, Persia and Central Asia has made it from the very beginning both a crossroads for trade and cultural exchange and an almost continuous battlefield. In the years since the Soviet invasion in 1979 the country has become the stage of an ongoing complex humanitarian emergency. The period of Soviet occupation was characterised by massive human rights violations.