Challenges When Responding to Humanitarian Emergencies

The chapter analyzes professional, contextual, and multicultural challenges that global mental health (GMH) professionals encounter when working in a humanitarian situation. The unreadiness of the highly regulated and siloed mental health (MH) profession to step outside the comfort zone is compounded by the scarcity of GMH-appropriate concepts, assessments, and interventions, leaving GMH providers with little choice to rely on obsolete or irrelevant tools and protocols. Establishing collaborative models and integrated approaches have demonstrated higher effectiveness but highlighted conflicted professional priorities, i.e., clinical vs public health approaches, or prioritizing immediate (i.e., humanitarian relief) vs long-term needs (i.e., development). The context-related challenges of humanitarian work involve managing complex and unpredictable situations, a hardly available referral system, and limited access to professional support. The need to consider security risks and the power differential elevates the significance of humanitarian expertise and ethics. In the fieldwork, the multicultural challenges go far beyond the cultural differences between the service providers and the service recipients. The challenges also involve working in multicultural, multinational teams and navigating the environment of different professional cultures. Familiarity with humanitarian culture and its etiquette can improve communication, establish productive collaborations, and reduce misunderstandings.