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Social psychologists from MSF work with children and adolescents in Mexico in 2018.

Mexico 2018 © Christopher Rogel Blanquet/MSF

Mental health

Where we work, we may see people with a mental illness or confronting distressing situations, such as violence, loss, or displacement. Mental health support can be crucial to help people cope.

Putting mental health in context

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) provides mental health and psychosocial support as part of our emergency work around the world. In 2020 MSF teams provided 349,500 individual mental health consultations. This year, mental health services have been severely disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, even as the needs are compounded by the crisis. MSF teams are adapting to meet the challenges and drawing attention to dangerous gaps in care.  

~1 billion

people worldwide have a mental health disorder

22%

of people living in conflict zone experience mental health problems

425,500

Individual mental health consultations provided by MSF in 2022

Center for Comprehensive Care (CAI) in Mexico

How MSF responds to mental health

MSF provides emergency medical aid in response to armed conflicts, natural disasters, famines, and epidemics. MSF doctors and nurses are often seen treating physical ailments: bandaging the war-wounded, rehydrating cholera patients, performing emergency Caesarean sections. But for more than 20 years, MSF has also been caring for patients’ mental health.

Depression and anxiety

Depression and anxiety can immobilize people at just the time when they need to take action for themselves and their families. Mental health care is also part of services for HIV/AIDStuberculosisnutritionsexual violence, and during disease outbreaks and disasters.

MSF’s mental health care aims primarily to reduce people’s symptoms and improve their ability to function. Often this work is done by local counselors specially trained by MSF. MSF psychologists or psychiatrists provide technical support and clinical supervision.

When appropriate, MSF’s counseling services may reinforce or complement mental health care approaches that already exist in the local community.

At the same time, specialized clinicians treat severe mental illness. But severe illness accounts for a minority of the cases that MSF sees.

Increasing capacity

People seek help for many reasons—the agonizing loss of a child in an earthquake, the trauma of sexual violence, getting caught up in a violent conflict. MSF mental health workers listen to their stories, and help them find ways to cope and move on with their lives.

Treating severely disturbed people remains a challenge for MSF teams, given the complexity of managing psychiatric drugs and medication.

Increasing teams’ capacity to treat these illnesses remains a priority for MSF. 

Setting up mental health care programs in emergency situations is not straightforward, especially when violence and trauma are ongoing, and therefore no "cure" is possible.

Sometimes, it is difficult to guarantee continuity of care in unstable and dangerous settings.

Ventimiglia

MSF responds to mental health needs around the world

Over the past 10 years, MSF has increased the number of mental health consultations in our projects by 230 percent worldwide.

Read more

How you can help

Not everyone can treat patients in the field. But everyone can do something.

Some humanitarian crises make the headlines—others don’t. Unrestricted support from our donors allows us to mobilize quickly and efficiently to provide lifesaving medical care to the people who need it most, whether those needs are in the spotlight or not. And your donation is 100 percent tax-deductible.

We need your support to continue this lifesaving work

We need your support to continue this lifesaving work

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