Overview of content:
General information on the situation in Pakistan
MHPSS – Guidelines
Download the manuals
Dear friends and colleagues,
This natural disaster will create untold mental health consequences – not just for the survivors who live and work in the communities and villages that were directly affected by the flood. This is truly a global natural and human disaster. Yet, the major and continuing task to address the disaster’s aftermath will fall on volunteers and professionals living and working in extremely difficult conditions in Pakistan. Their jobs will remain the most difficult and most wrenching, long after the television news teams are left, and the world’s attention moves to new events and occurrences. Mental health professionals and volunteers, of all the relief workers, have some of the longest lasting work ahead of them.
We have gathered information that can be useful for you as a relief worker or consider yourself as a helper. Because of the shortage of time, the Spanish version will be added later.
General information on the situation in Pakistan
Overview of the flood response in Pakistan
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
The HumanitarianResponse.info platform is provided to the humanitarian community by OCHA as a means to help responders coordinate their work on the ground. Here you will find updated information on Pakistan.
Pakistan: 2022 Monsoon Floods – Situation Report ...
2022OCHA Humanitarian Advisory Team (HAT)
Offers day-to-day information about the situation in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, and Sindh provinces, and the surrounding areas. Says something about the situation and the coming risk. PDF of the full report here.
MHPSS Emergency Toolkit
2019MHPSS.net
This toolkit is a compilation of a range of several practice guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) in humanitarian contexts, to enable easy access to key multi-lingual resources. The aim is to provide MHPSS practitioners, polic...
UNICEF Pakistan Humanitarian Situation Report No. 1
2022UNICEF
Situation reports are the main reporting tool to monitor UNICEF’s humanitarian response. They provide an update on the situation and needs of children in a country or region, as well as information on UNICEF’s response and funding requirements.
Also see MHHRI’s Thematic page on disasters.
Here we gathered useful links to guidelines on disaster. By definition, a disaster is a tragedy of a natural or human-made hazard that negatively affects society or the environment. Often developing countries suffer much greater costs when a disaster hits because these countries are much more vulnerable and have less appropriate disaster management measures. Floods, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, and man-made disasters can cause – in addition to all damages to the infrastructure – significant psychological and social suffering to the population that has been affected. The psychological and social impacts of disasters may be acute in the short term, but they can also undermine the long-term mental health and psychosocial well-being of the affected population.
Mental Health and Psycho Social Support - Guidelines for relief workers and helpers
NCTSN Flood Resources
The National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN)
These pages cover the impact of floods on Children and Families with headlines such as Readiness, Response, and Recovery regarding floods.
Psychological First Aid: Field Operations Guide 2nd Edi...
The National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN)
An evidence-informed modular approach for assisting people in the immediate aftermath of disaster and terrorism: to reduce initial distress, and to foster short and long-term adaptive functioning. It is for use by disaster responders including first ...
Guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support
2017International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
Guideline by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Rates of mental health problems often increase during natural disasters, war and conflict, and pre-existing disorders may also resurface or be exacerbated by conflict or violence. Although pe...
Guidelines for gender-based violence interventions in h...
2015IASC
We also know that in times of crises and disaster there is an increased level of violence, in particular gender-based violence (GBV). GBV is a serious problem in the context of complex emergencies and natural disasters where normal structures of soci...
Важливі навички в періоди стресу. Doing What Matters in...
2020WHO
Цей посібник призначений для тих, хто перебуває у стані стресу. від батьків та осіб, що забезпечують догляд що іншими, до фахівців сфери охорони здоров’я, які працюють у небезпечних ситуаціях. This guide is for anyone who experiences stress, ranging ...
Managing stress in humanitarian workers
2012Antares Foundation
Humanitarian relief and rehabilitation agencies have to operate in a continuing changing context of increasing complexity. Often the work of their staff in the field is seriously hampered by deteriorating security, decreasing respect for their work a...
Save the Children Psychological First Aid Training
2013Save the Children
The Psychological First Aid Training Manual for Child Practitioners (PFA), aims to develop skills and competences of Save the Children staff, partners, and professionals in reducing the initial distress of children who have recently been exposed to a...
Inter-Agency Guiding Principles on unaccompanied and se...
2014Inter-agency Working Group on Unaccompanied and Separated Children, UNICEF
Children separated from their parents and families because of conflict, population displacement or natural disasters are among the most vulnerable. Separated from those closest to them, these children have lost the care and protection of their famili...
All manuals can be downloaded from the MHHRI website
There are three different manuals, which respectively address working with women, with boys and men, and with children who have experienced sexual violence.
The manuals are translated into several languages. The page numbers in each manual remain the same across languages. This allows survivors and helpers to work from copies in their preferred language and read the same content on the same pages. It also makes it easier to teach participants when participants and trainers work in more than one language. The manuals include a toolbox. Survivors can use it individually to regulate their own emotions through grounding exercises or in collaboration with a helper. Helpers can also use grounding exercises to take care of themselves as helpers.
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