The Psychosocial Impacts of Intimate Partner Violence against Women in LMIC Contexts: Toward a Holistic Approach.

Work on the mental health impacts of intimate partner violence in low-and middle-income countries has focused primarily on clinical disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and substance abuse. This paper analyzes how non-clinical, psychosocial impacts from everyday stressors, particularly economic hardships and concern over one's children, cause extensive suffering and damage women survivors' well-being, influencing the development and expression of clinical disorders. Using a social ecological framework, the paper analyzes how psychosocial impacts arise at multiple levels, including societal levels where social norms often devalue women and privilege men, and how the stressor accumulation increases the harm caused by intimate partner violence (IPV) against women (IPVAW).

Healing and reintegration of former child soldiers: A relational resilience perspective.

The author advocates for a psychosocial and community perspective in the work with child soldiers, as torture survivors.

Supporting mental health and psychosocial wellbeing through social and emotional learning: A participatory study of conflict-affected youth resettled to the U.S.

Background: A growing literature has drawn attention to the central role that schools play in supporting the adjustment of resettled refugee youth and promoting their mental health and psychosocial wellbeing. In particular, the recent proliferation of school-based social and emotional learning (SEL) initiatives presents an opportunity to strengthen supports for resettled adolescents. This participatory research study aims to understand how high school students resettled from countries in the Middle East and North Africa region are experiencing the challenges and opportunities of acculturation and the ways in which they believe schools can better support them in this process.

The role of culturally responsive social and emotional learning in supporting refugee inclusion and belonging: A thematic analysis of service provider perspectives.

Young refugees resettled to the U.S. from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region face significant acculturative stressors, including language barriers, unfamiliar norms and practices, new institutional environments, and discrimination.

Psychosocial Well-Being, Mental Health, and Available Supports in an Arab Enclave: Exploring Outcomes for Foreign-Born and U.S.-Born Adolescents.

Few studies have assessed the impact of displacement, resettlement, and discrimination on well-being outcomes for adolescent refugees resettled within the U.S. Conducted in three charter schools in the intergenerational Arab enclave of the Detroit Metropolitan Area, this mixed-methods study assessed the mental health and psychosocial support for both U.

Ecologies of care: mental health and psychosocial support for war-affected youth in the U.S.

Background: Youth resettling to the U.S. from conflict-affected countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) face countless challenges.

School-based programs for Supporting the mental health and psychosocial wellbeing of adolescent forced migrants in high-income countries: A scoping review.

As communities around the world continue to receive record-setting numbers of newcomers fleeing armed conflict, schools play a central role in supporting these families through the challenges of adjustment. Policymakers and educators in several high-income countries have begun to invest in efforts to support these young forced migrants not only academically, but also socially and emotionally. This study reviews the published and grey literature on 20 school-based programs aimed at improving the mental health and psychosocial wellbeing of adolescent forced migrants in high-income countries from 2000 to 2019.

Supporting resilience in war-affected children: How differential impact theory is useful in humanitarian practice.

This paper examines the utility of the Differential Impact Theory for child protection practitioners who work in humanitarian settings, with a focus on war-affected children. A primary advantage of DIT is that it focuses efforts to strengthen children's resilience on improving children's social ecologies at different levels. This ecological focus is more likely to address the sources of children's suffering and resilience and also helps to avoid the problems associated with an individualized focus.

Bottom-up approaches to strengthening child protection systems: Placing children, families, and communities at the center.

Efforts to strengthen national child protection systems have frequently taken a top-down approach of imposing formal, government-managed services. Such expert-driven approaches are often characterized by low use of formal services and the misalignment of the nonformal and formal aspects of the child protection system. This article examines an alternative approach of community-driven, bottom-up work that enables nonformal-formal collaboration and alignment, greater use of formal services, internally driven social change, and high levels of community ownership.

Family structure and sexual and reproductive health outcomes among adolescents in rural Sierra Leone.

Orphanhood is common in sub-Saharan Africa, and is a critical issue shaping global assistance for children. Care arrangements for children are often fluid, and many 'orphaned' children have a surviving biological parent. This study examines the protective effects of family-level factors on early sex and pregnancy in rural Sierra Leone.

Commentary: A social environment approach to promotive and protective practice in childhood resilience--reflections on Ungar (2014).

The field of mental health and psychosocial support for children in humanitarian emergencies has been evolving rapidly. A decade ago, researchers and practitioners frequently took a deficits approach that emphasized problems such as trauma, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in zones of armed conflict. Assessments focused on PTSD and typically led to the provision of curative responses such as Western psychotherapies as the first response for the affected population.

Milton Schwebel (1914-2013).

Milton Schwebel was born May 11, 1914, in Troy, New York, the son of Frank Schwebel and Sarah Oxenhandler Schwebel. He died October 3, 2013, in Tucson, Arizona. His 99 years were filled with love, activism, scholarship, and leadership.

Dealing with the consequences of war: resources of formerly recruited and non-recruited youth in northern Uganda.

Purpose: This article explores resources that help formerly recruited young people in dealing with war-related adversity and subsequent challenges, hence fostering their resilience.

Methods: Self-reports on pertinent resources were collected from 1,008 northern Ugandan youth, of whom 330 had formerly been recruited by the Lord's Resistance Army. Based on the conceptual framework developed by the Psychosocial Working Group, the reported resources were thematically clustered and quantitatively analyzed.

Informal and formal supports for former child soldiers in Northern Uganda.

This study aimed to evaluate the potential contribution of informal community initiatives and formal interventions in support of former child soldiers' resilience in the wake of armed conflict. Using a cross-sectional survey design, a stratified random sample of 330 formerly recruited and 677 nonrecruited young people was consulted about their perspective on desirable support for former child soldiers provided by close support figures, communities, humanitarian organizations, and governments. Data analysis occurred by conducting qualitative thematic analysis and statistical chi-square analysis to explore clusters, similarities, and variations in reported support across the different "agents," hereby comparing the perspectives of formerly recruited and non-recruited participants.

Relevance or excellence? Setting research priorities for mental health and psychosocial support in humanitarian settings.

Background: Humanitarian crises are associated with an increase in mental disorders and psychological distress. Despite the emerging consensus on intervention strategies in humanitarian settings, the field of mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) in humanitarian settings lacks a consensus-based research agenda.

Methods: From August 2009 to February 2010, we contacted policymakers, academic researchers, and humanitarian aid workers, and conducted nine semistructured focus group discussions with 114 participants in three locations (Peru, Uganda, and Nepal), in both the capitals and remote humanitarian settings.

Research priorities for mental health and psychosocial support in humanitarian settings.

Wietse Tol and colleagues lay out a a consensus-based research agenda for mental health and psychosocial support in humanitarian settings.

Do no harm: toward contextually appropriate psychosocial support in international emergencies.

In the aftermath of international emergencies caused by natural disasters or armed conflicts, strong needs exist for psychosocial support on a large scale. Psychologists have developed and applied frameworks and tools that have helped to alleviate suffering and promote well-being in emergency settings. Unfortunately, psychological tools and approaches are sometimes used in ways that cause unintended harm.