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Miriam Mbwana, a mental health counselor with MSF, talks to a sex worker seeking psychological support in Malawi

Malawi 2023 © Diego Menjibar

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. MSF’s mental health care aims primarily to reduce people’s symptoms and improve their ability to manage a difficult time so they can get on with their lives.

~1 billion

people worldwide have a mental health disorder

22%

of people living in conflict zones experience mental health problems

493,900

individual mental health consultations provided by MSF in 2023

Center for Comprehensive Care (CAI) in Mexico

How MSF responds to mental health

MSF has been providing mental health care for more than 20 years, including during emergency responses such as the 2023 earthquakes in Turkey and Syria and floods in Brazil in 2024. Of 493,900 individual mental health consultations provided by MSF in 2023, most were in countries currently experiencing conflict such as Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Ukraine, or where large numbers of people have recently fled conflict, including Bangladesh and Syria.

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.

A man sits on the shores of Greece and is tended to by two MSF workers.

What is psychological first aid?

Learn more about this vital mental health component of emergency response.

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