Mental Health and Sequels to Violence in Primary Health Care

Research over the last decades has demonstrated an immediate but often long-lasting and complex physical and mental health impact of violence in its different forms, including domestic violence, war, civil war, gender-based and sexual violence, genocidal action, imprisonment, and persecution. It is one of the most common problems in primary and public health care. It is frequently accompanied by further challenges, such as lack of or unequal access to resources in redress for the suffering of survivors. Many countries or regions with widespread violence suffer from low economic resources, disregard for human rights, and the absence of adequate rules of law that could stop violence and impunity and ensure support for victims. Violence and persecution can also contribute to brain drain, further damaging public health systems in already vulnerable regions or even directly damaging public health infrastructure. Recent events like the Russian invasion of Ukraine have demonstrated that even health infrastructure is not spared but is often targeted in broad-scale violence. Victim groups include direct victims who have experienced an event and indirect victims such as family members, helpers such as health care professionals in the treatment networks, communities, and especially minority groups. Second and third-generation impacts observed in the recent decades of research, including epigenetic impact and health in general, further underline the importance of the implications for public health in general. Indirect victims are frequently neglected by research. Vulnerable groups, especially women, children, the elderly, and LGBT community members, are the most affected groups and should receive special attention. Interdisciplinary collaboration and new approaches to the understanding, describing, and treatment of sequels and the different cultural and social environments in which they occur need to be developed, shared, and implemented as rapidly as possible. Models of relevance that could, in this context, improve not only civil society but also public health include Universal Jurisdiction and International Courts to sanction perpetrators and give justice and redress to victims, standards of ethics, and investigation of crimes, such as the UN Istanbul Protocol, but also an integrated and low-resource community oriented Mental Health and Psychosocial services (MHPSS) model proposed by the UN and WHO, or the newly emerging technologies.

In this Research Topic, we invite research and articles in all related areas pertaining to public mental health, and especially, but not exclusively, considering so far insufficiently covered areas such as the impact of different forms of violence like hate speech, mobbing, and shaming on the internet. This may be in relation to the complex community impact of violence, new support and treatment strategies addressing the direct and indirect impact of the different forms of violence, as well as political persecution in the context of natural disasters, like the recent earthquakes and on the implications of recent forms of the extreme violence of governments or terrorist groups, as in Ukraine, Myanmar, East Turkestan, or Syria. Public mental health education, ranging from that of students to industry professionals, with a focus on low-resource regions or refugee camps, life-long learning of post-graduate health care professionals, public health information strategies, and interdisciplinary mental health training of other professions are also areas of coverage of this Research Topic, as is the prevention of health professionals’ victimization.