Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS)

Complex emergencies such as earthquakes, flooding, bombings, and the recent massacre in Utøya (Norway) can seriously affect entire populations and rip nations apart, with long-term psychosocial consequences impacting the most vulnerable as well as the helpers for years following the disaster.
A large number of high quality European guidelines and tools for psychosocial support interventions in crisis management already exist and have been developed during the last two decades. OPSIC will build on this work by identifying gaps and assessing best practices and develop a new innovative comprehensive operational guidance system (OGS), which will serve as the operational interface between the existing guidelines and the practical intervention tools and methods. This interface is currently missing and hinders the effective operationalization of and compliance with the guidelines in practice.
Based on new research and analysis of PSS guidelines, best practices and the long-term psychosocial impact of crisis, OPSIC will design and develop an web based comprehensive operational guidance system that will operate as a common shared platform and single point of reference for PSS in crisis management. The OGS will be validated through simulations tests in three countries with crisis managers, first responders, volunteers and possible victims and evaluated according to selected key performance indicators. Subsequently, the OGS will be demonstrated for a governmental end-user and a road map for implementation of the OGS into the end-user protocols will be prepared.
For the development of the guidance system, OPSIC will focus on all four phases of crisis management; prevention, preparedness, response and recovery, and relate these to the following target groups; - crisis managers, intervention forces, first responders, volunteers, victims and indirectly affected community.