2018 - MOTION 1 -
Mental Health and Childhood
MOTION
The OCB gathering asks the OCB Board to ensure provision of mental health and psycho-social support as an integrated service with medical care services to pediatrics age group (incl. adolescents) in projects with high medical and mental morbidity context, and to reinforce comprehensive, integrated and responsive mental health and social care services in community-based settings for early recognition and evidence-based management of childhood psychological suffering.
Fad in Egypt
BACKGROUND AND EXPLANATION
Everyday stresses can cause changes in your child's behavior. It's important to recognize and treat mental illnesses in children early on. Once mental illness develops, it becomes a regular part of the child's behavior which later on. This makes it more difficult to treat.
Worldwide 10-20% of children and adolescents experience mental disorders (WHO statistics 2017) half of all mental illnesses begin by the age of 14 and three-quarters by mid-20s. Neuropsychiatric conditions are the leading cause of disability in young people in all regions. If untreated, these conditions severely influence children’s development, their educational attainments and their potential to live fulfilling and productive lives. Children with mental disorders face major challenges with stigma, isolation and discrimination, as well as lack of access to health care and education facilities, in violation of their fundamental human rights.
While we were busy in treating medical illness solely in certain projects in all MSF projects across the globe, we miss the importance of psychosocial support that should be delivered at the same time to manage an existing illness or to prevent a later on mental illness to provoke
The motion objectives are to strengthen advocacy, to emphasize effective leadership and governance for child mental health in high morbidity context projects based settings, to provide comprehensive, integrated and responsive medical and psycho-social care services in parallel with main health care scope in the same project, as early recognition and management of childhood mental disorders by implementing strategies for promotion of psychosocial well-being, prevention of mental disorders and promotion of human rights of young people with mental disorders side by side by physical well-being, as it is an evidence by research.
In Egypt FAD 2018 Most of the attendants has agreed on the concepts of the topic of debate as its happening in MSF that we are providing mental health support in some projects side by side with the main medical scope in adults and in children, but in other project we are providing only medical care without interfering with same patient mental health services, where other partners were taking over that element, so we thought that if medical services would be integrated with mental and psychosocial support services in the same project specially to pediatric age group, that will add more to the quality of health delivered to the children and under five as well.
FEEDBACK (Final draft)
Activities implemented/planed since the motion was voted :
CHILDREN :
- In emergency settings (e.g. migrants/IDPs, like Yei, Kananga) : develop systematic implementation of psychosocial activities for children
- Development and implementation of psycho-therapeutic groups for children (fixed number of sessions with defined clinical content for each sessions) → implemented in Lesbos (Greece), in process in Egypt (VoT project) and Rustenburg (South Africa)
- Implementation of groups for parents:
- psycho education groups on specific topics based on disorders commonly faced in children (enuresis, aggressiveness, depression…) → Lesbos, Lebanon
- parents group discussion support: Lesbos, Lebanon
- Specific projects in schools for vulnerable children and teachers → Akkar (Lebanon)
- Work on the mother/newborns → Timurgara (Pakistan)
- Child psychiatry: medical management of child severe MH disorders: Nauru (child psychiatrist send), Lesbos (support from OCA child psychiatrist MH advisor)
ADOLESCENT:
- Recruitment of an adolescent advisor in the medical department
- Start of “a circle” on adolescent in the medical department
- Projects focusing on SRH for adolescents: Venezuela, Bolivia, Indonesia
- Specific group support activities for unaccompanied minors migrants (Lesbos, Serbia) or SV adolescents (e.g. South Africa) and technical support of professionals working with UAMs in reception centers (Roma)
- In the coming intersectional MHPSS guideline, integration of a paragraph on specificities for children/adolescents in each chapters linked to specific settings
- guidance documents drafted about to consent/assent for minors & MH care according
- Integration of items related to children and adolescents in the next OCB standardized database (under construction)
Due to budget restrictions, it is more and more difficult to send international MH professionals with experience on children to train the staff.
More on the association? https://www.insideocb.com/