Conducting a desk review to inform the mental health and psychosocial support response to the 2016 Ecuador earthquake

ABSTRACT

Following the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Ecuador on 16 April 2016, multiple salient public health concerns were raised, including the need to provide mental health and psychosocial support for individual survivors and their communities. The World Health Organization and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees recommend conducting a desk review to summarize existing information, specific to the affected communities, that will support timely, culturally-attuned assessment and delivery of mental health and psychosocial support shortly after the onset of a disaster or humanitarian emergency. The desk review is one component of a comprehensive toolkit designed to inform and support humanitarian actors and their responders in the field.

This commentary provides a case example of the development of a desk review that was used to inform personnel responding to the 2016 earthquake in Ecuador. The desk review process is described in addition to several innovations that were introduced to the process during this iteration. Strengths and limitations are discussed, as well as lessons learned and recommendations for future applications.

KEYWORDS:

• desk review
• disaster behavioral health
• earthquake
• Ecuador
• humanitarian crisis
• mental health
• mental health and psychosocial support
• MHPSS
• psychosocial

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.

Acknowledgments

We thank the following persons for contributing to data collection, screening and synthesis for the desk review: Natalie Ann Cain, James Patrick Ennen, Yanira E. Garcia-Barcena, Matthew Scott Heller, Katherine Masih, Rachel McKean, Zsuzsanna Nemeth, Daniel Martin O'Shea, Denisse Cristina Pareja V., Carlos Mario Parra, and Nelson Sanchez (University of Miami Miller School of Medicine); Farnoosh Ali, Victor Cabezas, Alvaro Chiriboga, Melissa Co, Lakshmi Gopalakrishnan, J. Esteban Guzman, Sarah Hartman, Valentina Lucio Paredes, Sarah Oeffler, Mateo Saenz, Zainab Sulaiman, and Andrea Yandun (King's College London & London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine); and Daniel Hostetler (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health). We also thank affiliates of Universidad Complutense de Madrid for assistance in translating the desk review into Spanish: Pedro Altungy Labrador, Rocio Fausor de Castro, Maria Paz Garcia Vera, Noelia Moran Rodriguez, and Ana Silvia Salazar Zetina.

We would also like to thank Drs. Ricardo Araya, Mark Jordans, Brandon Kohrt, Wietse Tol and Mark van Ommeren for their guidance related to desk review procedures.

Funding sources

Ms. Greene is supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) under grant T32DA007292. Ms. Troya is supported by the Keele University ACORN studentship, and was also supported by SENESCYT Ecuador Becas de Excelencia 2015 under grant No. 063-CIBAE-2015 during the 2015–2016 academic period.