Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, exposure to traumatic stressors, and health care utilization were examined in 84 women attending a primary health care clinic in Mogadishu, Somalia. The Somalia-Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale was used in this active warzone to measure symptoms. Nearly all women reported high levels of confrontations with violence, half described being exposed to a potentially traumatizing event. Nearly one third had significant PTSD symptoms.

This review links practice, funding, and evidence for interventions for mental health and psychosocial wellbeing in humanitarian settings. We studied practice by reviewing reports of mental health and psychosocial support activities (2007–10); funding by analysis of the financial tracking service and the creditor reporting system (2007–09); and interventions by systematic review and meta-analysis.

• The Interagency Emergency Health Kit is a box with medicines and medical supplies designed to meet the expected primary health care needs of people exposed to major humanitarian emergencies.
• Previous editions of the kit have been inadequate to help people with severe mental or neurological disorders.
• The challenge to be addressed was to propose the inclusion of one medicine for each of five classes of psychotropic medicines.

• There has been a great need to develop a research agenda to strengthen mental health and psychosocial support in humanitarian settings; prior research in this area has had limited inputs from practitioners.
• We developed a consensus-based research agenda for the next ten years through inputs from an interdisciplinary group of academics, policy makers, and practitioners (n = 82) representing regions where humanitarian crises occur.