COVID and Pandemic Issues

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

Editor: Joseph O. Prewitt Díaz, PhD

Mental Health and Psychosocial Support during the COVID-19 Response

Published. Available now.
Pub Date: June 2023
Hardback Price: see ordering info | see ordering info
Hard ISBN: 9781774912898
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-77491-290-4
E-Book ISBN: 9781003347620
Pages: 340pp w/ index
Binding Type: Hardback/ ebook
Notes: 7 color and 7 b/w illustrations


Reviews
"An essential read for both mental health and psychosocial support professionals, as well as disaster and crisis leaders and practitioners. Dr. Prewitt Diaz weaves together framing and subject matter expertise that builds on academic research pre-COVID-19 pandemic, emergent literature from 2020 and 2021, as well as key case studies. Most relevant, Dr. Prewitt played a key leadership role in the IFRC America’s COVID-19 operation, supporting the 35 countries that make up the region in designing and implementing robust mental health and psychosocial support programming. . . . Thank you for this vital contribution to the robust mental health and psychosocial support field!"—From the Foreword by Dr. Jono Anzalone, Executive Director at The Climate Initiative, Portland, Maine

“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

“A much-needed book that could serve as an initiator of a dialogue for engaging the most vulnerable population and disaster response after a major pandemic. . . . The book covers the three regions of the world with the largest native, migrant, and underserved populations in the world. (2) It suggests that in order to provide mental health care in a global pandemic, it is necessary to develop a language of distress and care that is easily understood by the affected people. (3) It suggests tools in areas related to community involvement, participation, development, and monitoring and evaluation. (4) It highlights the importance of engaging faith-based leadership in providing information and a locale for congregation for its members, thus integrating medicine, mental health, and spirituality.”
—Dr. Irving Cotto Perez, Pastoral Counselor and Practitioner in Disaster Crisis Intervention United Methodist Church, USA



This new volume presents a holistic scenario of the challenges of providing mental health and psychosocial support to areas around the world with the most vulnerable populations during the tragic COVID-19 pandemic. The book synthesizes over 350 interviews with mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) professionals on the ground in 27 countries in three regions of the world, discussing the lack of services and providing strategies for implementing mental health and psychosocial support in such situations going forward. The book is a first look at MHPSS during the COVID-19 pandemic with the hope that it will inspire and generate action for future worldwide mental health and psychosocial support responses.

Divided into three sections, the volume first addresses existing guidance for MHPSS from the viewpoint of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, considering resilience as an individual and collective activity, and looks at how to engage communities in the time of COVID-19. The second part of the book consists of chapters that takes the reader through the experiences of selected countries in three regions: Central and South America, Western and Sub-Saharan Africa, and four countries in Southeastern Asia. The third section presents a theoretical and practical model for the implementation of MHPSS as part of a humanitarian response at the regional level.

This essential book is a call to action for cultural, linguistic, and contextual actions that inform inclusiveness of the most vulnerable and unheard communities and that re-establish resilience through mental health and psychosocial community-led programs. The volume is the analysis by a seasoned humanitarian worker with over 30 years of direct experience with the most vulnerable communities, with contributions from his colleagues. They help frame COVID-19 as a systemic loss of protective factors, where communities collapsed psychologically, socially, and economically.

Mental Health and Psychosocial Support during the COVID-19 Response: An Overview is an essential read for both mental health and psychosocial support professionals, as well as for disaster and crisis leaders, practitioners, and policymakers.

CONTENTS:
Foreword by Dr. Jono Anzalone

Preface

Part 1: Background of MHPSS

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

2. Activating Community Resilience through Community Capitals After COVID-19
Joseph O. Prewitt Diaz

3. Community Engagement in Times of COVID-19
Anjana Dayal De Prewitt

PART 2: ASSESSMENT OF POPULATION NEEDS OF THE MOST VULNERABLE

4. Community Engagement During COVID-19 and Beyond
Joseph O. Prewitt Diaz

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

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

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

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

9. Addressing Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Needs in Cameroon, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda
Joseph O. Prewitt Diaz

PART 3: IMPLEMENTING MENTAL HEALTH AND PSYCHOSOCIAL SUPPORT

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

11. Developing a Universal Model of an MHPSS Regional Response
Joseph O. Prewitt Diaz

12. Chronology of MHPSS Interventions in the Americas During the Immediate and Early Recovery
Greisy Massiel Trejo Rodríguez

13. Country-Level Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Programs: Moving Forward After COVID-19
Joseph O. Prewitt Diaz

14. Mental Health and Psychosocial Support During and After the Pandemic: A Practical Response
Joseph O. Prewitt Diaz

15. Monitoring and Evaluation of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support
Joseph O. Prewitt Diaz

Index


About the Authors / Editors:
Editor: Joseph O. Prewitt Díaz, PhD
Former Professor, Pennsylvania State University, USA

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 soon learned from the wisdom of the people the value of listening, identifying together common problems, and devising ways to solve community problems. Together with others, he developed the Puerto Rican Peace Corps: VESPRA. Soon thereafter, he migrated to the United States to pursue assisting migrant workers in the tobacco fields of Connecticut. Dr. Prewitt Diaz was an advocate for the poor, linguistically diverse, and underrepresented. Dr. Prewitt Diaz was a professor at the Pennsylvania State University, where he conducted research, taught, and trained community practitioners who would become leaders in the fields of school psychology and bilingual education. During his tenure, he received multiple awards and recognitions, which include the W.K. Kellogg Fellowship and the Woodrow Wilson Hispanic Fellowship acknowledging his research and scholarly contributions. During this period Dr. Prewitt Diaz and two colleagues conducted a major national study on the effects of migration on children; this study led to national changes in migrant education. From 1991 to 1998, Dr. Prewitt Diaz served as a mental health volunteer in some of the major disasters in the United States: Hurricane Andrew, the Oklahoma City Bombing, and the 9/11 United Recovery in Shanksville, PA. In 1998, Dr. Prewitt Diaz was assigned to the first international disaster where the American Red Cross implemented a community psychosocial support program in Las Casitas Mud Slides in Nicaragua.




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