Table 1

Types of MHPSS programmes

MHPSS programmesKey components
Cognitive–behavioural therapy (CBT)
  • Provide face-to-face, individual or group-talking therapy (ie, not online or via media or other materials).

  • Explore and make an explicit link between specific thoughts, emotions, somatic and non-somatic feelings and behaviours.

  • Seek to positively change a person’s thinking (‘cognitive’) to elicit change in what they do (‘behavioural’).

Narrative exposure therapy (NET)
  • Facilitate exposure to specific or non-specific reminders, cues or memories related to exposure to a traumatic event.

  • Support a person to reconstruct a consistent and/or coherent narrative about their traumatic experience either verbally or through writing to aid symptom reduction.

Other psychotherapy modalities
  • Provide face-to-face talk or body psychotherapy.

  • Address the intrapsychic and interpersonal impact of humanitarian crises to support improved overall psychological functioning and coping skills.

Psychosocial programmes
  • Support individuals, families and communities by developing and building on existing coping mechanisms to manage the impact of humanitarian crises.

  • Focus on understanding people’s experience of humanitarian crises within broader social dimensions to facilitate individual and community resilience strategies to mitigate that impact.

Psychoeducation
  • Solely provides education on the impact of exposure to humanitarian crises.

  • Seek to empower people by promoting awareness and manage the impact of that exposure via educational materials and tools.

  • MHPSS, mental health and psychosocial support.