Mental health and spiritual well-being in humanitarian crises: the role of faith communities providing spiritual and psychosocial support during the COVID-19 pandemic
Faith and MHPSS during the COVID-19 pandemic
This article explores the ways faith groups and faith leaders responded to the varied needs of their community, specifically their mental health and psychosocial needs. The authors detail how the COVID-19 pandemic, and its secondary impacts reemphasised the relevance of MHPSS in responding to crises, including in humanitarian contexts. The pandemic also demonstrated that faith remains a deeply felt core need and important coping mechanism for many facing adversities.
Faith as a core need
Through analysing the role of faith and faith actors providing MHPSS through a rights-based approach, this article argues that faith actors played an important role in providing faith-inspired MHPSS during the COvID-19 pandemic, in part through the provision of spiritual care.
Spiritual Care
However, the authors argue that spiritual well-being should not be conflated with psychosocial well-being. While faith groups play an important role in MHPSS, their primary role is to offer spiritual care.
Comment:
This is a timely contribution to the growing literature on faith inspired MHPSS, demonstrating the relevance of faith and faith actors for supporting mental health and psychosocial well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic.