The long history of socio-political turmoil in Haiti has had a negative impact on the healthcare system, including the lack of mental health (MH) legislation, policy, and strategic plan. The 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew in 2016, further destroyed this already fragile structure. Many actors arrived in the country and implemented MH programs with limited coordination or guidance from the Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP). In 2012, in an effort to provide guidance and gain leadership in mental health, the MSPP with PAHO’s support, developed a ten-year plan that began to integrate mental health into primary health care in order to meet all needs, but not formal coordination has yet been achieved.
The COVID-19 pandemic promoted the urgency to organize all these efforts through the newly established Mental Health and Psychosocial Intersectoral Technical Working Group (MHPSS-TWG) with the aim of supporting the MSPP in developing and ensuring an effective, coordinated inter-agency MHPSS needs focused response; promoting the engagement and leadership of the Minister of Health and encouraging the participation of partners (international and local); promoting best practice standards and recommendations, developing relevant trainings, guidelines and tools for MHPSS actors to bridge COVID-19 emergency.
With the support of PAHO, an ad hoc interactive mapping tool was developed and disseminated through the training of different TWG actors for the completion of the tool and its use for the 4Ws overview of MHPSS services. The main goal is to make the tool available also for potential non-specialized providers to be involved in the integration of mental health in primary healthcare services. In this way, the MSPP will be able to support all efforts, current and planned for the coming months, so that Haitian communities can improve mental health and psychosocial well-being through better coordination and capacity building to address pressing and unmet needs.