MENTAL HEALTH AND PSYCHOSOCIAL SUPPORT IN HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCIES IN AFRICA: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR ENGAGING WITH THE FAITH SECTOR

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Corrigendum

Notes

1. This paper was prepared while the first and third authors were Visiting Scholars at Fuller Theological Seminary. A version of this paper was presented as the lecture “Resilience, Faith and Psychosocial Support: Competing or Complementary Visions?’ within Fuller's Center for Missiological Research, Fall Missiology Lecture Series, on November 14, 2013.

2. See mhpss.net.

3. “Religion” and “faith” were considered the most general terms to capture programmatic engagement with religious belief and practice. A search for specific terms such as “church,” “mosque,” “prayer,” “spirituality,” etc. may have identified additional reports associated with particular forms of religious belief and practice.

4. Usually mythico-historical figures with the potential for angelic presence.

5. A venerated object representing a replica of the Tablet of Law on which the Biblical 10 Commandments are inscribed, this is given special honor in a place of worship.

Additional information

Joey Ager studied theology at Oxford University, with a focus on African theologies of liberation. He has worked with Sojourners, a faith-based social justice organization in Washington, DC; with Ember Arts, promoting women's livelihoods in Uganda through fair trade; and as a researcher for the Joint Learning Initiative Hub on Resilience and Local Faith Communities. He is currently working as a community organizer with PICO, a national network of faith communities organizing around justice issues across the USA.

Behailu Abebe completed his PhD from Queen Margaret University in 2005 after conducting field work on the cultural religious coping of communities in Ethiopia affected by the recent Ethio-Eritrean border conflict. He subsequently conducted field studies on resilience of children in Northern Afghanistan and worked as a research associate at the University of Dundee in Scotland in the areas of child protection and improvement of mental health services. He currently works at Hope University College in Ethiopia.

Alastair Ager has worked in the field of international development—with a focus on refugees and internally displaced communities—for 25 years, after originally training in psychology at the universities of Keele, Wales and Birmingham in the UK. He has wide international experience across sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, Europe, and North America, having worked as a consultant for agencies, including UNICEF, UNHCR, Save the Children, World Vision, Oxfam, and Child Fund International.