Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, there was a need for specialist services for severely mentally ill people who were presenting to the emergency medical clinics set up for displaced people. That need was unmet. Using guidelines drawn up by the Inter Agency Standing Committee (IASC) and piloting the Health Information System (HIS) of diagnostic categories in mental health, weekly mental health clinics were begun in eight mobile clinics. A psychiatric liaison service was also started in the main casualty hospital.

 The author of this field report, originally a professor in mathematics, describes in a personal report how oppression and violent conflict in Kosovo effected a change in his career, and how he became the founder and director of a local nongovernmental organisation in the field of education and psychosocial support for children. After the conflict, many psychosocial activities were organised. Unfortunately, local experience was often ignored in these projects.

This field report describes a ‘minimal budget project’ aimed at developing the expertise of a mixed group of workers. This project included nurses, community workers, counsellors and psychosocial workers attached to, or connected with, the mental health units in four hospitals in east Sri Lanka. In order to develop expertise, the project included a series of basic counselling training, as well as ongoing guidance during monthly peer supervision meetings.

This paper describes the lives of young, female former Tamil Tiger fighters, in Batticaloa, after the civil war in Sri Lanka. It shows how the kinship and solidarity found in female networks, in a matri-lineal society, has helped them survive the conflict. In Batticaloa, female-headed households bear the main burden for caring for the traumatised, and sometimes injured, returning female, former soldiers. This is done in the absence of social welfare services or specific medical or psychosocial care.