Mental Health and Psychosocial (MHPSS) Support for Children in Fragile and Conflict Contexts

Abstract

BRAC, a leading development organization in the world, piloted a Mental Health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) initiative for the primary school children in South Sudan and Afghanistan. The MHPSS model builds the capacity of teachers through training to understand norms around coping, how to support children living in stress and trauma.  It promotes active listening, nonjudgmental attitude, and empathetic understanding of the teachers. Action research was conducted to know the management challenges in the implementation of MHPSS and its immediate effectiveness of the intervention. Finding shows that even after the challenges faced during the process of the implementation, i.e., to introduce the new component in teachers’ training and educate the training participants to receive the ideas of MHPSS, the intervention eventually helped increasing hope and aspiration among the students.