Gaza Community Mental Health Program 2019-2021

Year 2020 has presented extraordinary challenges to Gaza community, as a result of the effects of coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. GCMHP has responded to these challenges with additional efforts and support to affected people and significant adjustments to service delivery to ensure continued access to mental health services. The progress over the year 2020 has achieved key results focusing on improvements in mental health outcomes under GCMHPs 3-year strategic plan. This includes work to improve resilience, social and emotional well-being, and mental health in the Gaza Strip, and to support and strengthen local mental health workforce. There has also been a continued focus on engaging with stakeholders in mental health policy development, service design and delivery. In this regard, GCMHP helped in shaping and developing the national emergency response to COVID-19 crisis, through its input to the international and national committees, service providers and Clusters members, providing them with an insight on mental health gaps, methods of integrated care, screening and early mental health intervention. GCMHP issued fact sheets, work papers and monthly snapshots showing the mental health situation of the population under COVID-19. Globally, GCMHP participated in many international platforms, discussion sessions and webinars in order to exchange knowledge, information and experiences related to COVID-19 and its impact on mental health, the results and recommendations arose from each of which were disseminated among local professionals, civil organizations and the community, using media platforms and workshops. Locally, GCMHP contributed also to preparing and reviewing the Ministry of Health national emergency plan and the new national strategic plan 2021-2025. It also added its valuable inputs to the Humanitarian Needs Overview 2021 and the Humanitarian Response Plan 2021 which are managed by UN agencies such as UNICIEF, WHO, OHCHR, OCHA and oPt Humanitarian Fund. GCMHP has had a leading role from the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, as it has been providing integrated and specialized mental health services to the population in the Gaza Strip. The target groups also included people in home quarantine or official quarantine centers in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Social Development, and other service providers. GCMHPs direct services reached 16,424 beneficiaries with estimated dozens of thousands of indirect beneficiaries

Sweden plans to provide core support to GCMHP to fund its Strategic Plan for 2019-2021 with the following mission: 'Guided by the principles of justice and human rights, GCMHP provides inclusive, integrated, and specialized community mental health services in Palestine.' GCMHP has set the following three strategic objectives to achieve its mission: (1) to contribute to improving the mental health situation of the population in the Gaza Strip and activating the rapid response mechanism in case of emergency; (2) to support the capacity of professionals and other actors to provide appropriate focused care through academic and professional programs; (3) to strengthen GCMHP's leadership role through implementing model procedures, protocols, and research.  GCMHP throughout its various interventions and quality services aims at improving the psychological wellbeing and coping and resilience of its different target groups. Under the first strategic objective, the target groups are: indirect victims of human rights violations and traumatic events, children and youth under eighteen years old suffering from mental and psychological disorders, individuals suffering from chronic psychiatric and pervasive development disorders. Under the second strategic objective, the target group is: CBOs, NGOs, and medical care facilities to strengthen their capacity to provide non-specialized mental health and psychosocial support services, to increase the coverage of available mental health services across Gaza. Building the capacity of organizations through focusing on the third level intervention pyramid for mental health and psychosocial support will allow trainees to be able to take care of basic mental care conditions, which would give GCMHP more room to focus on specialized mental health services.