Healing the Invisible Wounds of War

The Wilton Park Dialogue, in partnership with Save the Children and the UK Department for International Development, brought together 50 experts in the field of mental health and psychosocial support in January 2018. Together they looked at challenges and ways forward in responding to the mental health needs of children and young people affected by conflict in the Middle East and globally. The goals and objectives of the Dialogue were to:

1. discuss and evaluate good practice in MHPSS for children and adolescents during and after conflict, lessons learned globally and innovations from new programming;
2. share best practice for making programmes multi-sectoral, coordinated and integrate with humanitarian missions;
3. discuss the challenges of implementing MHPSS programmes and how to address these, including age and gender sensitivities, stigma, accessing difficult-to-reach areas and strengthening national capacity, with a focus on the Middle East; and 
4. develop a global roadmap setting out the priority pathways needed, likely challenges and solutions, and necessary collaborations for scaling up MHPSS programming for children and adolescents affected by conflict.

This report presents the global roadmap developed by the Dialogue, setting out the priority pathways needed, likely challenges, solutions and necessary collaborations for scaling up mental health and psychosocial support programming for children and adolescents affected by conflict.