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 of available 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. Finally, through the exposition of an emerging conceptual framework offered by the Psychosocial Working Group (Ager & Strang, 2001), the article suggests measures that could form the basis for a broad understanding of psychosocial intervention in contexts such as Sri Lanka.

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During our work as counsellors for refugees and trainers of counsellors in areas of armed conflict, we have met with many language and communication problems. Interpreters can help in dealing with these problems, but in addition to that we learned to use little plastic dolls as an extra medium in working with people from different cultural backgrounds. In this article we describe the use of these dolls.

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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 of children affected by war and of refugee children. This article describes the activities of volunteers of different provenance and in different war-related situations.

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Mental health programmes in war-stricken areas aim to offer immediate help to those who most need it. Usually, there is no urge to start a systematic registration on demographic data of clients and on characteristics of interventions. Nevertheless, there is a growing necessity to do so. Structured gathering of information can help professionals to obtain insight in the age, sex and number of clients they see, in the usefulness of the interventions they offer on the basis of which they can demonstrate the importance of their work. This paper describes the pros and cons of the development and implementation of such a monitoring system in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is argued that although methodological disadvantages can be formulated against this type of evaluating services, the pros outweigh the cons, even in ongoing crises.

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After surviving a recent massacre in the north of the 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 of the participants were discussed. Several steps, including performing a ritual (‘burying the dead’) and psycho-education on stress and trauma, were developed using the resources of the group. In view of the high numbers of traumatised communities, participants felt the need to pass on what they had learned. At a later stage, they began to view these issues in the context of community health work and prepared to change the mental health curriculum of their programme.

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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.

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In March 2003 Médicins Sans Frontiéres (MSF) started its weekly radio programme in order to foster psychosocial awareness in the Kashmir valley. This programme is produced by MSF national and expatriate staff, keeping the cultural, social and religious beliefs and ways of the people closely in mind, and thus treading most carefully. Every part of this programme was developed after extensive field research including talking with general people, some key people, interviews with doctors, focus group discussions and so on.

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