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Displacement due to conflict, war and natural disasters, and more generally living in a conflict, post-conflict, or post-disaster situation generally requires major adaptations, as people need to redefine personal, interpersonal, socioeconomic, cultural, and geographic boundaries. This implies a redefinition of individual, familiar, group, and collective identities, roles and value systems, and may represent an upheaval and a source of stress for the individual, the family and the communities involved. Conflict and war create specific psychosocial vulnerabilities that, if combined with other risk factors, including pre-existing conditions and social and security predicaments of the present, can affect the mental health of the individuals involved.
Providing psychosocial assistance to conflict and disaster affected populations in educational, cultural, community, religious, and primary health setting reduces vulnerabilities, and prevents their stagnation, which may in turn result in long-term mental problems, and social pathologies.
IOM works with partners and key stakeholders to strengthen the capacity of psychosocial services offered to vulnerable migrants. IOM is also a member of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Reference Group on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings, and has provided psychosocial support to and created capacity-building initiatives for crisis-affected populations in emergency and post-emergency situations since 1998.
The mental health and psychosocial support services of IOM serve migrant, host, displaced, mobile and crisis-affected populations, including former combatants through identifying, analyzing and responding to psychosocial and cultural integration needs of target populations in a variety of educational, sanitary, and community settings; promoting availability and accessibility of psychosocial and mental health services for target populations; promoting access to culturally competent mental health care for target populations; providing ad-hoc designed and integrated mental health, psychosocial, and cultural integrative responses to crisis-affected populations and migrants in particularly vulnerable situations, including unaccompanied minors, trafficked persons, stranded migrants, demobilized soldiers, among others; and mainstreaming psychosocial approaches within IOM's core programmes and activities.
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Activities 
Psychosocial Needs Assessment in Emergency Displace- ment, Early Recovery, and Return: IOM tools 
