Nowadays, the mental health profession is aware of the importance of the social network for the coping and healing processes in persons affected by war. In war-related circumstances the natural social network is impoverished or lost. Volunteers represent a possibility for the enlargement and enrichment of the social network.. They can specially contribute in various ways to the empowerment and well-being f children affected by war and of refugee children. This article describes the activities of volunteers of different provenance and in different war-related situations.

After surviving a recent massacre in the north ofthe Democratic Republic of Congo, a group of 22 staff members of a community health nursing programme requested the assistance of the author. During a three-day meeting the traumatic experiences ofthe participants were discussed. Several steps, including performing a ritual (‘burying the dead’) and psycho-education on stress and trauma, were developed using the resources ofthe group. In view ofthe high numbers of traumatised communities, participants felt the need to pass on what they had learned.

This paper describes the training of' psychosocial counsellors as conducted by the Centre for Victims of Torture, Nepal. Both the proceedings of the training and the content are described. For clarity purposes a division is made between that part of the training in which skills are taught that can be used with more frequently encountered problems and that part of the training that deals with problems requiring a more specialised approach, such as HIV AIDS.

Keywords: problem-solving therapy, counselling training, HIV AIDS counselling, holistic care.

The psychosocial field in Sri Lanka suffers from a lack of consensus about what precisely constitutes a psychosocial intervention, also at a global level,. By using a number ofavailable frameworks and examples of practice in Sri Lanka, the author attempts to demonstrate how it is possible to include the wide range of existing interventions under the ‘umbrella,’ category psychosocial.