98. Mental Health Research in the Syrian Humanitarian Crisis by Hussam Jefee-Bahloul and Kaveh Khoshnood

In areas of armed conflicts, efforts to provide mental health services for refugees and internally displaced populations (IDPs) generally lack measures of effectiveness, and the gap between research and practice is significant. The Syrian Crisis has been described by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as "the great tragedy of this century". The UNHCR reports at least 24 agencies currently providing mental health and psychological support to Syrian refugees.

The actual interventions provided vary considerably among the agencies, which complicates the implementation of academic research and mental health services in humanitarian settings. This is further challenged by the limited academic publications on the matters of Syrian refugees' mental health beyond basic needs assessment.

In an effort to standardize mental health interventions in humanitarian settings, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) had published standardized guidelines for provision of mental health services, but had not addressed the role of academic research.

Creating a research agenda for mental health in the less-resourceful settings has been emphasized. However, there are barriers to establish academic research in emergency humanitarian settings. Those barriers have been identified before, and we will mention few examples here in relevance to the Syrian scenario.

Continue: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4032903/