After our IPSO Afghanistan NGO was founded, VBC was integrated into the Basic Package of Health Services (BPHS) in 2011–2016 with support from the EU and the Federal Foreign Office. The state health system’s capacities improved considerably during this time, but they still showed great potential for expansion in view of the huge need for action. This is why we established our Psychosocial and Mental Health Center Kabul in 2016. It is the centre for online counseling services throughout Afghanistan and it provides more comprehensive mental health services than are available in largely overcrowded and overburdened government clinics.
A day care centre is attached to the centre. Its services include support groups, life skills groups, mediating family conflicts and educating people with regard to mental health and psychosocial stressors. A psychiatric examination and, if needed, care are provided by psychiatrists and a medical assessment of psychosomatic symptoms is also provided by doctors.
The need for the centre’s services is greater today than ever before. We are pleased and grateful that we have been able to maintain operations in cooperation with Caritas international through their support as well as that from private donors to date, despite the difficult political conditions that humanitarian projects find themselves in when working in Afghanistan. We would also like to thank the Federal Foreign Office, which made founding the centre possible in 2016 and supported us up to 2022.
Publications:
- Value-based Counseling at the Psychosocial and Mental Health Center Kabul. Funded by the German Foreign Office, © 2018 IPSO gGmbH
- Psychosocial Counseling and Mental Health Center Kabul. A contribution to combating the causes of flight and the stabilization and integration of the returnees and their families funded by the German Foreign Office and implemented by Ipso. Funded by the German Foreign Office, © 2017 IPSO gGmbH
We need your support to be able to run the project in the future!