Globaldev careers: The mental health coordinator

While COVID-19 has helped shift attitudes around mental health and highlighted the need for greater investment in this area, it has also created new challenges for teams working to support the well-being of vulnerable populations in humanitarian settings. Glaucia Pereda, coordinator for HIAS’ mental health and psychosocial support — or MHPSS — program, heads up a team in Venezuela that provides training and designs interventions to prevent further harm to the mental health of the communities it works with. Pereda, who started out with the organization as a psychologist, talked to Devex about providing mental health support during the pandemic and the skills that help her succeed. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. What is the work of an MHPSS coordinator? It’s being able to support the team, specifically psychologists and professionals related to MHPSS, that are working in the field executing or implementing the projects. The coordinator seeks to facilitate the work that they're doing. For example, we can provide training with psychological tools ... we support them with monitoring and evaluation. ... There's a lot of training work in supporting and educating the field staff, and there's also logistical [and] administrative work in terms of how to implement or best take advantage [of] the training we do. We also carry out diagnosis of needs within the community. … We carry out proposals for new projects based on identified needs, and we design interventions which are the most appropriate for certain contexts. “People need to feel safe. They need to be with their families. … So the challenge here is how we can have a positive impact on the psychosocial well-being of these people.” --— Glaucia Pereda, Venezuela mental health coordinator, HIAS How has your day-to-day changed in the past months because of COVID-19? As a result of COVID-19, communication has become much more challenging … and it's what most makes our work difficult. [Because of the situation in Venezuela] not being able to have reliable internet ... to be in communication with our field staff. … [We have had] to adapt everything to be done remotely but with the communications limitations. It has also affected our on-site visits. How did you end up in this role? My first degree is in anthropology, and then I started to study psychology. I was always very interested in the broader social problems [though], so I didn't see things just from an individual or clinical aspect but rather was always interested in psychosocial elements and the interaction between what's happening in the environment, in the social context, and how that has an impact and influence on the behavior, thoughts, and mental health of individuals. I started working in research in the National Institute Against Racial Discrimination here in [Venezuela]. ... I worked with focus groups, I did interviews in the communities, and I started to get a lot more training in the field. I had also worked on the community side ... with survivors of GBV [gender-based violence] and also with children and teenagers. That experience allowed me to get into the humanitarian field. With HIAS, I started out as a psychologist and [then] had the opportunity to work more in the field. What are the biggest challenges in working as an MHPSS coordinator? We have these interventions of MHPSS which address part of the problem or attempt to support part of the problem. But ... where the context has an impact on the mental health of the people, psychological support is not sufficient. People need to feel safe. They need to be with their families. … So the challenge here is how we can have a positive impact on the psychosocial well-being of these people … when [for example] their family members have migrated and they're far away. What skills have been most valuable to the role? The personal skills that are required to work in this context are mainly [being able to] adapt to change and flexibility of thought, because [plans] change from one second to the next. Someone who does not have this flexibility in their mindset and is accustomed to everything working properly will be very frustrated ... for example, [when you] have planned a training one month in advance and then it turns out that day there was a power cut. Also, resilience [is important]. … We [as field workers] also live within these contexts. … But we have to help others who are in a worse state than us to deal with the context. Self-care [is important]. I don't think you can work in this area if you don't have good self-care because you will burn out very easily at work. You need to know how to set boundaries, have spaces for recreation, and be aware of the tools and skills for stress management, because a lot of people depend on you. What advice do you have for other psychologists looking to work in the humanitarian space, and what should they know before embarking on this career? Study the psychological problems or symptoms that you see in a person not just from the clinical perspective — those due to individual factors or genetic factors — but also seek to get a bit more training on the psychosocial aspect … and what impact the context has on people. Focus on training in this social approach and knowing how to provide multisectorial interventions, not just a psychological intervention, and to see what other types of social interventions could have a positive impact on the well-being and the mental health of [participants]. I would also very much recommend being able to learn from interventions in emergency situations, specifically psychological first aid … and basic psychosocial support. That is also fundamental in [knowing] how to work with high-risk cases. ... People who are at higher risk for suicide ... survivors of gender-based violence — you don't work with them the same way that you work with other people. So understanding the specific needs … and being able to have more knowledge about the experience of certain vulnerable groups [is important], and [as part of this] it's also fundamental to understand the social and historical context at a global level.