This presentation describes how socio-ecological approaches may help to address the plight of youth in situations of political violence and humanitarian emergencies. The gap caused by discrepancies in epidemiological prevalence rates, individual and family needs, and available human and material resources could be bridged by an ecological and transgenerational theoretical framework to facilitate a systems approach. Such a theoretical base could furthermore form the basis to engage professionals in a multi-sectoral analysis and collaborative strategy.

Biography: Joop de Jong worked for years in Africa as public mental health expert, psychiatrist and psychotherapist. He developed a nation-wide mental health program in Guinea Bissau on which he wrote his doctoral thesis, combining an anthropological and epidemiological perspective. He was the founder and director of the Transcultural Psychosocial Organization (TPO), until its merger with HealthNet in 2004 worldwide the largest NGO providing mental health and psychosocial services in more than 20 countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Programs of TPO and its affiliated organizations often operated in armed conflict and disaster areas and gave special attention to the prevention of violence, reconciliation, and to interventions for youth, former combatants, child soldiers and sexual violence. Joop de Jong worked part-time with immigrants and refugees in the Netherlands. Over the past decades he developed novel approaches to global mental health by integrating insights from public mental health, anthropology and epidemiology in community interventions in a variety of cultures. He combined interventions with research and emphasized the relation between psychosocial factors and socio-economic construction after war. He tried to bridge reductionist perspectives on PTSD and other types of psychopathology with critical social science.