New Guide Helps Haitian Clinicians Provide Psychosocial Care

In the days and weeks that followed the January 12 earthquakes in Haiti, health care workers and clinicians worked tirelessly to provide medical treatment to those in need. Many patients, and many of the providers themselves, were also experiencing severe emotional trauma; wounds that not all clinicians are trained to recognize and address.

“After the earthquakes, the need for emergency care meant that I-TECH clinicians who had previously been working almost exclusively with people living with HIV and AIDS began to see many more patients, including patients who were not being treated for HIV,” explains Elizabeth Robinson, I-TECH Training Development Specialist. “Many of these people were suffering from emotional trauma. It became clear that clinicians and other health care workers would benefit from a basic level of mental health (or what we call psychosocial) training.”

To address this need, I-TECH, in collaboration with University of Washington clinicians and the Ministère de la Santé Publique et de la Population (the Haitian Ministry of Health) developed and provided psychosocial support and training to I-TECH Haiti staff, clinical mentors, and Haitian health care workers. “We wanted to build upon the psychosocial first aid that was already being provided, and to build local capacity to treat the twenty percent of patients that have more severe and persistent symptoms,” explains I-TECH Division Director Dr. Scott Barnhart, who visited Haiti shortly after the quake.

Drawing from a document first circulated by the World Health Organization, World Vision, and the World Trauma Foundation, I-TECH also developed a French-language pocket guide, Guide Rapid d’Evaluation et De Soins aux Surviviants du Seisme (PDF, 500KB) to help clinicians provide psychosocial care in an emergency context. Beginning with the basic principle “Do No Harm,” the guide provides an accessible, easy-to-use framework for evaluating and responding to symptoms of trauma.

“The goal is to help clinicians provide some degree of psychological first aid, recognize the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and conduct a rapid mental health screening,” says Robinson. “It helps [clinicians] know what to do and what not to do, how to approach patients, and how to ask the right questions.” Robinson adds that the guide can also help providers recognize their own limitations and refer patients to further care: “There is guidance to help them say ‘yes, this is something we can help with here,’ or ‘no, it’s best to refer this client to more specialized services.'”

Although prolonged stress (the very challenge so many Haitians continue to face) can have damaging repercussions, some of this damage can be mitigated by an effective psychosocial response. Many people are much less likely to need professional support in the future if they receive compassionate, caring, psychosocial support as soon as possible.

The new pocket guide, along with continued psychosocial support training and other efforts, is part of I-TECH Haiti’s work to help clinicians connect patients to this much-needed care.