Psychosocial Support and Mental Health Services (PSSMHS): Policy and Institutional Framework in Disaster Management—An Indian Experience
摘要
India is a high-risk country for disasters. For many years, the disaster response in India was relief-centric, and there was no proper long-term response and culture of prevention. The creation of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) in 2005, as the apex body for disaster management, has brought about a paradigm shift in disaster management. One of the essential mandates of the NDMA is to issue National Disaster Management Guidelines (NDMG) to the ministries/departments to assist them in formulating their respective Disaster Management (DM) plans. In this regard, the NDMA has issued 34 NDMGs on different themes to provide the basis for preparing DM plans at various levels. While formulating these guidelines, psychosocial care has emerged as the foremost cross-cutting area across disasters. Multiple experts, government functionaries, and mental health professionals felt an overwhelming consensus to develop separate guidelines for PSSMHS. The NDMA took up the task of formulating the PSSMHS guidelines, including various stakeholders; NIMHANS, being the nodal agency for the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and with vast experience of delivering PSSMHS across the country, played a significant role in framing these guidelines by bringing in the interface between the field realities coupled with the capacity building and critical dimensions in the formulation of the guidelines with technical inputs. This path-breaking initiative laid down the detailed roadmap for planning, coordinating, and implementing the PSSMHS at all levels for different phases of disaster management. The impetus that kickstarted after the initial release of PSSMHS guidelines culminated in various policy shifts and the integration of the same into DM. The current chapter will unveil the current status of PSSMHS inclusion in national, state, and district-level guidelines. Furthering the effort to streamline the implementation to build a robust PSSMHS for the country, NDMA sensed the need for capacity building at various levels through specific training models to cater to the local needs to cover the requirements of central, state, district, and block-level functionaries. NIMHANS developed a National PSSMHS module to bridge this gap. This chapter highlights the implementation process and how to utilize the modules.