A Survey of the Mental Health and the Psychosocial Support organizations in the West Bank

There are clear indications that the recurrence of the emergency crises inflicted upon the Palestinian society in the West Bank and caused by the occupation are creating continuous suffering for people. Accordingly, this undermines the mental health work and creates many social and psychological problems on the individual, family and community levels. In addition, it increases the suffering of the marginalized groups and deepens the severity of the already existing problems, Therefore, all active organizations, particularly those working in the mental health and psychosocial support fields are required to work on removing all the obstacles that hinder the development of effective responses to the emergency crises Palestinians are subjected to. To this end, resources and support should be mobilized, joint coordination should be activated, efforts should be unified and quick response mechanisms should be preplanned. This would require a database to map the organizations and the services in the field of mental health and psychosocial support.

The East Jerusalem YMCA- Rehabilitation Program conducted, in June 2012, a study on the availability of updated and comprehensive survey studies for organizations that working in the field of mental health and psychosocial support in the West Bank. The investigatory research showed that an updated and comprehensive survey doesn’t exist for the providers of mental health and psychosocial support services, even though there is an urgent need for such a survey to these organizations in the West Bank.