Absolutely. An often-overlooked aspect of the challenges that are facing people who have been forcibly displaced is the mental health aspect and the psychological trauma that many people have to endure.
Being forced from your home in the first place is in itself often a traumatic experience. As we have seen throughout many of the places around the world where we work, people who are on the move, who have been forcibly displaced, are frequently exposed to significant levels of violence, even as their journeys progress. They find very few options for safety, so it's absolutely fundamental to provide psychological care and mental health services to people who have been displaced in every dimension of their journeys. For those who remain confined in displacement camps or who are moving onwards, it is a fundamental need that is frequently unmet.
For MSF—Doctors Without Borders—it is always a component of the work that we do in virtually every displacement context in which we work. We're aware of the higher levels of trauma that people experience, so we continue to prioritize that. As mentioned in my comments at the beginning, we do frequently see ourselves alone in the provision of this care across a number of different contexts.
