For Palestinians, events they experience as a result of life under the Israeli occupation can have a specific and chronic impact on their mental health. MSF has been running mental health programmes in the West Bank since 1996. Mervat Suboh is a MSF psychologist in Hebron, Palestine.
Voices from the Field - 10 Oct 2018

Every week, an MSF team of counsellors and health promoters puts on a play and conducts sensitisation activities with displaced people living outside and inside of Mweso school. Theatre is used as an effective means of health promotion and the performance touches on different themes, among them sexual and domestic violence. The MSF team use theater to present the different healthcare activities that are offered to people in Mweso.

Mental health

World Mental Health Day 2018: Beyond a healthy body

For people who have lived through violence or natural disasters, survival goes beyond ensuring physical well-being. Our professionals are there to provide mental healthcare to help heal our patients' psychological wounds. Project Update - 10 Oct 2018

Dans le centre médical de Tshibala (CNTA) les patients ne pouvant se rendre à l'hopital viennent se faire osculter par des médecins MSF. Si les enfants souffrent de malnutrition sévère ils seront ainsi ramenés à la base MSF et hospitalisés.

Democratic Republic of Congo

MSF adapts to changing needs in Greater Kasai region

Since MSF first launched an intervention to respond to the recent crisis in Kasai in May 2017, our teams have established medical projects in a total of five different locations in Kasai and Kasai Central provinces. Project Update - 9 Oct 2018

Nadiia, 79. from Mariupol listens to MSF nurse Tetiana as she goes over new treatment options. Nadiia receives medical treatment for heart and kidney problems. "I live alone in Mariupol. It was very hard being by myself during the conflict, as I live on the fourteenth floor of my building. I could hear shooting all the time, and it scared me a lot. It was a trying experience for me, but there are other people who have suffered more than me, so I don't feel I suffered that much. One lady from the village of Shyrokyne lost her entire house and garden. It has ruined her life for good. The conflict has affected many, many people in different ways. It destroyed them."

Mental health

Living with loneliness and trauma

How MSF’s patients cope with fear and hopelessness from four years of conflict in eastern Ukraine. Photo Story - 9 Oct 2018

Rohima Khatun, a 25-year-old Rohingya refugee, fled her Rakhine village and arrived in Bangladesh in September 2017. “We came to Bangladesh because the Mogh (derogatory term for local Rakhine Buddhists) were torturing us. They told us that we had no right to stay in Myanmar, and we should go back to Bangladesh.” She explains what happened to her: “First the military called a meeting. Those people who stay in their houses will be okay, they said, but those who move from place to place will be arrested. At 4am the next morning they came back and surrounded the village. They separated the men and women. They handcuffed the men and started raping the young girls.
The men were shouting and so were the children. They started beating them.” They set fire to the houses. Military men went to rape her she said, but when they saw she was seven months pregnant and carrying a four-year old child they left her. The child was terrified and started screaming: “The four-year-old was crying so they took the child from me and threw him in the fire. They also shot my husband in front of me in the yard of our house.” She discusses life now, a year later: “Every single moment I remember this and get emotional because I lost my neighbors, husband, child, relatives.”

Rohingya refugee crisis

Rohingya trauma and resilience

Rohingya refugees share their own stories of trauma and resilience with celebrated photographer Robin Hammond. Photo Story - 8 Oct 2018

Reference Materials: Speaking Out, MSF and the war in the former Yugoslavia 1991-2003

South Sudan

MSF resumes medical activities in Maban after suspension

MSF has resumed the full range of medical services in Maban, South Sudan, after most of our activities were suspended following a violent attack on our office and compound on 23 July Project Update - 5 Oct 2018

South Sudan

Helping Yambio’s demobilised child soldiers come to terms with their past

MSF’s mental health support programme helps some of South Sudan’s estimated 19,500 former child soldiers come to terms with their experiences as they reintegrate their communities. Project Update - 5 Oct 2018

37 year old Syrian Abdul Rahman Al Hamad has been on the Greek Island of Lesbos for one year. He left Syria because he “didn’t want to kill people in the war.” Adbul was conscripted into the army, but refused to join in what he says were “the mistakes” he witnessed – the rape and murder of innocent civilians. As punishment, for 14 days he was locked in a cell and tortured: “they put me in a cell alone, under the ground, everyday a strong man with a long beard beat me - everywhere in my body, and in my private area too, which has caused me so many problems, even now. They gave me food once a day.” Referring to an attempted rape he says “one night a soldier came and he wanted to do bad things to me. I fought him off.” Abdul has suffered severe trauma since. “The nightmares and the inability to sleep has become normal,” he says, “in my nightmares I see soldiers killing innocent people shooting them and cutting their throats… This dream comes back every night. I can’t sleep 15 minutes without having this dream.” Three times he has tried to kill himself. He sought help from Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders, a medical humanitarian organisation) who offered him medication. “Now I can sleep. Now I can eat. It helped,” he says. But the Post Traumatic Stress he is living with continues to plague him: “I don’t have any hope for my future, they destroyed everything. They destroyed my dreams.”Thousands of people looking for safety from countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Congo continue to risk their lives to reach Europe. Those who try to arrive via Turkey and the Aegean Sea have been trapped for an indefinite period of time on islands in Greece as part of the EU/Turkey deal and its deterrence and containment approach. In Lesvos (Lesbos), there are currently more than 7,500 people in a camp made for a maximum of 2500. With the camp so full refugees are now staying in an informal extension of the camp known as Olive Grove. The awful conditions at Moria camp/Olive Grove and arbitrary administrative situations have had a dramatic impact on their health and in particular their mental health. Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders, a medical humanitarian organisation) teams provide medical and mental health support out of the Moria camp and they run a clinic for severe mental health cases in Mytilene, the capital of the island. Photo Robin Hammond/Witness Change. Lesbos, Greece. 01 May 2018.

test

test - 4 Oct 2018

Afghanistan

“My sister, I will take care of you”

Gynaecologist Dr Séverine Caluwaerts shares her unique insight into MSF’s maternity ward in Khost, eastern Afghanistan, and the stories of its patients and staff. Voices from the Field - 3 Oct 2018

Four mothers posing in a corridor of the Hospital in Bili. All four of them are staying in the hospital with their child, that's suffering from a severe case of malaria. Since the beginning of the project in 2016, the pediatric ward already treated more than 4.000 cases of complicated/severe form of malaria.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

Independent medical humanitarian assistance

We provide medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. Our teams are made up of tens of thousands of health professionals, logistic and administrative staff - most of them hired locally. Our actions are guided by medical ethics and the principles of independence and impartiality. We are a non-profit, self-governed, member-based organisation.

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Occupied Minds: Allowing people to regain control of their lives