Psychosocial support
 Disasters, conflicts and health problems have severe psychosocial consequences. The emotional wounds may be less visible than the destruction of homes and physical infrastructure, but it often takes far longer to recover from the emotional and psychological impact than to overcome the material losses.
Psychosocial needs affect all other aspects of humanitarian work, such as shelter, food distribution and basic health care. Provision of traditional relief aid is, therefore, not enough. Neglecting emotional reactions may result in passive victims rather than active survivors. Early and adequate psychosocial support can prevent distress and suffering from developing into something more severe, and will help affected people cope better and reconcile themselves to everyday life.
Psychological and social – psychosocial |
The term ‘psychosocial’ refers to the close relationship between the individual and the collective aspects of any social entity. They mutually influence each other. The ‘psychological’ effects are caused by a range of experiences that affect the emotions, behaviour, thoughts, memory and learning capacity of an individual, while the social effects are the shared experiences of disruptive events that affect the relations between people. The social effects also have an economic and political dimension, since many people suffer multiple consequences of, for example, disasters or armed conflicts. |
Case study: Now, they paint with brighter colours
 After school, a group of children gather in a recently refurbished room of the Russian Red Cross community centre. The walls are filled with colourful drawings and paintings; shelves are lined with vases and other decorations. At a large table, around 15 girls are learning how to make jewellery. A group of teenage girls stand close together, whispering and giggling while looking at something hidden from the others.
A few smiling women walk between the children, giving advice on colour choices and patterns. It might seem like any after-school activity, but it is also something more. Appropriately named Ray of Hope, the workshop is organized in Beslan by Red Cross Red Crescent staff and volunteers to provide psychosocial support to children affected by the 2004 school siege. During that crisis, more than 1,200 children, teachers and parents were held hostage for three days and more than 300 were killed. The children in the workshop have all been physically or psychologically affected by the tragedy. A girl at the large table works with her hands only a few centimetres from her face because she lost almost all her eyesight during the fighting. Others have lost family members and friends.
Irina Kusova, president of the North Ossetian branch of the Russian Red Cross, says these programmes have been of great help to the children, and illustrates her comment with an example. “Now, when children start to paint, you will see only bright colours,” she says with a smile. “They do not use black anymore.” And, she continues, like the colours that the children use, “the future of Beslan is certainly getting brighter”.
 Building capacities in all parts of the world
Since 1993, the International Federation Reference Centre for Psychosocial Support, an outsourced function of the International Federation secretariat hosted by the Danish Red Cross, has built psychosocial capacity in National Societies in all parts of the world. The centre aims to achieve its mission - to promote and enable psychosocial well-being of beneficiaries, humanitarian staff and volunteers - through operational assistance, capacity building, competence development of staff and volunteers, advocacy and knowledge generation, and policy and strategy development.
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Health and community care
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