PSY1103V – Mental Health and Psychosocial Support has been developed as part of the Global University Academy, an international university collaboration aimed at making higher education more accessible to refugees, internally displaced people and their host communities.
The local driving force behind the initiative is Svein Stølen, professor of chemistry and former Rector at UiO.
– With this course, UiO aims to offer a programme that provides both practical skills and academic credits. Students gain knowledge they can use immediately, together with a formal qualification that can form part of further education and strengthen their chances of entering the labour market, he says.
Stølen points out that many refugees and local staff are already doing important support work in their communities, for example in cooperation with NGOs and voluntary organisations.
– Unfortunately, the training is often fragmented and usually not accredited.
Education in the refugee camp
The first cohort of students will follow the course through a learning centre in the Azraq camp in Jordan, and later also in the Za’atari camp. The new course combines digital teaching with local supervision and practical exercises.
The content has been developed in collaboration with academic communities in Jordan and organisations with experience of working in refugee camps. Through close cooperation with the German Jordanian University, parts of the teaching and exercises will also be conducted in Arabic.
Marianne Knarud is project leader and Secretary-General of the Global University Academy. She explains that UiO already has substantial expertise in this field, but that this is the first time such a programme is being offered.
– The Department of Psychology has strong academic competence and teaching in mental health, trauma, crises and psychosocial support, and has contributed its expertise in many places around the world, including to healthcare workers in Ukraine, she says.
– Nevertheless, PSY1103 is something entirely new.
The combination of target group, teaching format and academic credits makes the initiative particularly innovative, according to Knarud. The course also builds on experiences from the University of Geneva’s Certificate of Open Studies in Community Health, which has been offered to refugees and local healthcare workers in several countries.
– We have taken many lessons from this model.
Refugees as resource persons
Course coordinator Beate Seibt, professor at the Department of Psychology, believes it is crucial that the educational programme is rooted in the people who already live in the local communities.
– In most humanitarian programmes, expertise comes from outside. Professionals travel in, provide training or services, and then leave again. But this model leaves little lasting capacity locally, she says.
– We turn the usual logic on its head: this course educates people who are already there, who know the language, the culture, local healing traditions, and the concrete challenges that people in the camp face every day.
According to Seibt, various training programmes already exist in refugee camps, but not higher education in mental health and psychosocial support.
– We combine the practical with the theoretical and go deeper than the three‑day courses that are common in humanitarian contexts. This means that students do not only learn techniques, but also understand why they work, can use them more consciously, and adapt them to their specific circumstances, she says.
Students will learn, among other things, to recognise signs of mental health problems, use conversational techniques, facilitate group activities and support programmes, and know when someone needs help from a specialist.
Teaching takes place through online lectures, Arabic‑language supervision and practical exercises in the camp. The course concludes with a practicum in which students work directly with the local community under professional guidance.
Seibt emphasises that refugees should not primarily be seen as recipients of help.
– Refugees are resource persons with knowledge and experience that Western academic communities rarely have access to. This course is built on the conviction that local knowledge is just as important as international expertise, and that the best solutions arise when these are combined.
Local knowledge meets international frameworks
A central part of the work on the new course has been finding a good balance between research‑based knowledge and local ways of understanding mental health, explains Beate Seibt.
– This is perhaps the question we have spent the most time on, she says.
Seibt points out that Western clinical frameworks cannot simply be transferred to other cultural contexts.
– How people understand mental health problems, what they call them, whom they seek help from, and what makes sense as support varies enormously. The role of the family, the place of religion, the importance of the clan, local traditions. These are not obstacles to good mental health and psychosocial support practice. They are resources, she says.
– That is why we start from the students’ own understanding of mental health and wellbeing. International frameworks, such as the IASC guidelines and the WHO EQUIP framework, are offered as tools for critical and selective use.
A greater need for local capacity
Svein Stølen points out that the course is being launched at a time when the humanitarian system is under severe pressure.
– We have seen a dramatic decline in the funding of humanitarian aid, particularly after the loss of USAID support. This forces large international aid organisations to cut support services in all contexts. The situation is creating an acute need for new solutions, he says.
For Stølen, this is an indication that the need for local competence is urgent.
– Programmes that build local capacity rather than importing expertise from outside have become a necessity. When international organisations withdraw, the local community has to carry more of the burden. It is then crucial that people have the knowledge and skills they need, he says.
This is also the goal of the Global University Academy, according to Marianne Knarud. People with refugee or internally displaced status should be able to use their competence to develop the communities in which they live.
– We hope that the new course will help build local capacity and make psychosocial support more accessible to more people in the camps, she says.
Knarud believes that the course may have an impact far beyond the education itself.
– The course can open doors for students, whether to work in local organisations and support services, or to further studies in, for example, psychology, public health or social work at other institutions.