Mental Health and Psychosocial Support during the COVID-19 Response An Overview

Part 1: Background of MHPSS

1. Community-Based Mental Health and Psychosocial Support as a Tool to Address the Societal Needs Raised by COVID-19

2. Activating Community Resilience through Community Capitals After COVID-19

3. Community Engagement in Times of COVID-19

4. Community Engagement During COVID-19 and Beyond

5. Community-Based Psychosocial Support: A Process for the Protection of Vulnerable Populations During COVID-19

6. Serving the Most Vulnerable: Psychosocial Support in Indigenous Communities in Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru

7. Psychological Support Migration Appeal International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent

8. Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Three African Countries: Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone

9. Addressing Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Needs in Cameroon, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda

10. An Examination of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Four Low-Income Countries in South Asia

11. Reaction of a Selected Group of Youth to the COVID-19 in Panama

12. Developing a Universal Model of an MHPSS Regional Response

13. Chronology of MHPSS Interventions in the Americas During the Immediate and Early Recovery

14. Country-Level Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Programs: Moving Forward After COVID-19

15. Mental Health and Psychosocial Support During and After the Pandemic: A Practical Response

16. Monitoring and Evaluation of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support

Biography

Joseph O. Prewitt Diaz, PhD, is a practitioner-scholar who began his career as a public health worker in the depressed villages of his native Puerto Rico. He was formerly a professor at Pennsylvania State University, where he trained over 120 PhD-level educational leaders. He served as a mental health volunteer at some of the major disasters in the United States, among them the Oklahoma City Bombing and the 9/11 United Recovery in Shanksville, PA. In 1998, he was assigned to International Disaster Services where he implemented mental health and community psychosocial support programs in South America and Southeast Asia. He has worked in over 57 countries as the mental health technical expert for the IFRC/ COVID-19 work group. During his years of service, he received multiple national and international awards for his service, research, and scholarly contributions.

“This book travels the communities who, at the end, with the MHPSS model developed individual and collective resilience to overcome their needs and develop behavioral responses to successfully manage those experiences in times of COVID-19.  The case studies in the book make it possible to discriminate between the real needs of individuals within each community, leading researchers and service providers to the development of those members of the communities within the context of another disaster. The MHPSS model scientifically collects those best practices to attend, alleviate, develop appropriate behavioral responses, and survive in these times of Covid-19, that have altered the mental health of the population throughout the world. Finally, we cannot lose perspective that this pandemic has changed the way people live, the way of working, studying, interacting, even the way of appreciating and loving.” — Aida I. Rodríguez Roig, EdD, Chancellor, University of Puerto Rico at Humacao