The European Mental Health Week has kicked off! This year, the week runs from 22-28 May and its theme focuses on mentally healthy communities. In parallel, the first day of the European Public Health Week, running from 22-26 May, is also dedicated to mental health for all.
During the week, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE), in cooperation with HaDEA, is also organising a meeting with four projects funded under the EU4Health programme and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) to further identify synergies. Through a contribution agreement under EU4Health, the IFRC aims to provide quality and timely psychological first aid to the conflict-affected population in Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees in impacted countries.
The four projects, managed by HaDEA, will implement promising best practices to improve mental health and psychosocial wellbeing in migrant and refugee populations, with a particular focus on people from Ukraine:
- The Peace of Mind project aims to develop and implement an innovative approach to strengthen the mental health and psychological wellbeing of refugees and displaced people in Europe. The project has been organising workshops on healing, resilience and empowerment as well as trainings on professional care, self-care and trauma relief. A training of trainers has been set up to share and implement best practices with the objective to reach 16 000 refugees to support their mental health. The project also targets at least 700 health professionals in Poland, Germany, Lithuania to strengthen their mental health and performance capacity. So far, more than 5000 Ukrainians have benefited from the proposed activities.
- Well-U aims to adapt and implement a series of tools and interventions developed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to support refugee children and their caregivers in Italy, Greece, Hungary and Romania. This will provide the basis to collect and disseminate best practices, knowledge and training materials. The project has translated the training material into Ukrainian and Russian and has provided it to Ukrainian children in Greece.
- The U-Rise project aims to support the implementation of mental health interventions for Ukrainian refugees in Slovakia, Poland and Romania. The project has organised two webinars with 30 Ukrainian mental health professionals to exchange best practices and strengthen the European network of Ukrainian and Russian-speaking mental health professionals. The project plans to scale up these interventions across the EU.
- MESURfacilitates treatment options for displaced persons with depression, addressing the treatment gap that displaced people often face. It provides immediate mental health support by translating into Ukrainian and Russian the digital, evidence-based intervention tool “iFightDepression®” and making it available in Poland, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece and Estonia. The project has been organising trainings for health professionals about depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and other prevalent mental disorders amongst displaced persons.
Background information
EU4Health, with a budget of €5.3 billion, is the fourth and largest of the EU health programmes. The EU4Health programme goes beyond an ambitious response to the COVID-19 crisis to address the resilience of European healthcare systems. The programme provides funding to national authorities, health organisations and other bodies through grants and public procurement, contributing to a healthier Europe.
HaDEA manages the vast majority of the total EU4Health budget and implements the programme by managing calls for proposals and tenders from 2021 to 2027.
Source: European Commission | European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA) (https://bit.ly/420PcVn)