WEBINAR RECORDING: Peace, Justice, and Love Lessons from contemporary Afghanistan on the irrevocable link between psychosocial well-being and peace

The webinar, “Peace, Justice, and Love – Lessons from contemporary Afghanistan on the irrevocable link between psychosocial well-being and peace”, is part of a series organised by the IASC MHPSS Reference Group’s working group on ‘MHPSS and Peacebuilding’ and featured a discussion of the implications of a participatory study to define and operationalize psychosocial wellbeing in Afghanistan by the study’s authors.

MHPSS.net is pleased to share the “Peace, Justice, and Love – Lessons from contemporary Afghanistan on the irrevocable link between psychosocial well-being and peace” webinar recording below

Featured Speakers: Mariam Ahmady, Spozhmay Oriya, Raihana Faqiri, and Rohina Zaffari from Kabul University along with Martha Bragin from Hunter College, City University of New York.

Moderator:  Ananda Galappatti (MHPSS.net)

When people think of MHPSS and peace building, they expect to talk about some combination of trauma treatment and political peace building. This is especially true in relation to Afghanistan, still in the midst of 40 years of armed conflict and political violence.  But with most Afghans today having experienced a lifetime of traumatic events, the Afghan university system has sought to develop community programs to support and improve the wellbeing of its citizens (Babury 2013). This webinar will discuss a phenomenological study conducted by a team of educators from Kabul University and Herat University speaking to 440 Afghan community practitioners, in 58 gender segregated focus groups in 4 provinces (north, south, west and center) to define and operationalize the concept of psychosocial well-being based on their work with the diverse peoples of Afghanistan. The purpose of the study was to develop locally based criteria to measure the effectiveness of community personal, family, group, and community counseling services.

The results surprised the researcher team. After coding the results and coming back for a second round of qualitative concept validation regardless of gender, ethnicity, region, religious tendency, client population, the respondents associated participating in actions or progress toward peace and justice as the number one requirement for psychological and social wellbeing. The second and third were love and friendship within the family and freedom.  This webinar describes the study and how the study team has taken the results forward, and notes that in a country at war, there is no mental health without peace and justice, and there is no peace and justice without mental health.

To access the “Peace, Justice, and Love – Lessons from contemporary Afghanistan on the irrevocable link between psychosocial well-being and peace” webinar as well as all our other webinars please subscribe to the MHPSS.net YouTube channel