Background

By the end of 2014, 59.5 million individuals were forcibly replaced (UNHCR 2015). East Africa and the Horn of Africa  are among of the world’s hot spots with 2.6 million refugees and 5 million IDPs (e.g. 1.1 million refugees and 1.1 million IDPs originate from Somalia; from South Sudan originate more than 600,000 refugees and 1.6 million IDPs) and host countries (Kenya hosting >550,000; Ethiopia hosting >650,000).

Decades of organised violence, flight, famine and natural disasters, as well as the absence of a mental health care system put a large psychological burden on the population, especially as the “mental health treatment gap” is especially high in Low Income Countries, e.g. Somalia (WHO 2010). IDPs and refugees show high demands on psychological care because they frequently suffer from psychiatric conditions, such as Depression, Posttraumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD), and Substance Use Disorders. Furthermore, domestic and educational violence is especially high in post-conflict societies and displaced people, putting another burden to the next generation (Rieder and Elbert 2013).

The WHO and other national and international organisations promote the inclusion of mental health field into developmental assistance, but this goal has not yet been achieved (Gilbert, Patel et al. 2015). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that will replace the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) after 2015 will not change this situation: on the one hand they highlight that improvement of health care belongs to the vision for a better world; this is especially the case in Goal 3 „Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages“ and in Goal 10 „Reduce inequality within and among countries“ because displaced people are frequently discriminated in terms of access to health care. However, the mental health needs have been omitted in the MDGs and are only mentioned randomly in the SDGs (Tsai and Tomlinson 2015), despite seven mental disorders being listed among the 25 conditions that cause the highest proportion of the global years lived with disabilities (Vos, Flaxman et al. 2012).

This workshop will bring together German, African and international researchers, organisations and institutions in order to create new networks and new collaborations. This workshop aims to contribute to improve the lives of displaced people in their region of origin and support their abilities to reconstruct their societies in the future. Fostering research collaborations with African universities and scholars, this workshop will discuss and envision innovations in African health care systems to better serve the psychological needs of displaced people.