“Faith-Sensitive” Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Pluralistic Settings: A Spiritual Care Perspective

Over the past two decades, in response to a growing awareness of the impacts of humanitarian crises on mental health and psychosocial well-being, leading UN agencies and international aid organisations have developed a comprehensive framework for Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS). In more recent years, aid workers have further begun to consider religious life as a central factor in mental health and psychosocial well-being, viewing “faith” as an important, but often neglected, component of empowering and “locally appropriate” MHPSS. However, the attempt to deliver “faith-sensitive” MHPSS across the highly pluralistic settings of international humanitarian intervention has entailed protracted ethical and practical challenges. In this article, we argue that these challenges may be usefully understood in terms of three areas of concern: the lack of evidence on effective interventions; the risk of reproducing problematic power dynamics between MHPSS providers and receivers; and the challenge of articulating a cross-culturally relevant paradigm of “faith-sensitivity” comprehensible across a wide range of religiously diverse settings. This article contributes to these challenges by drawing on the field of professional spiritual care to suggest areas of potential contribution and interdisciplinary dialogue

Mental health and spiritual well-being in humanitarian crises: the role of faith communities providing spiritual and psychosocial support during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract: Across the globe, people’s reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying lockdowns highlighted, and continued to stress, the relevance of mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) in responding to crises, including in low-income and emergency settings. They also demonstrated the importance of faith practices and communities of faith as core needs and important coping mechanisms for many affected people in times of crisis. Drawing on data collected by World Vision International, the world’s largest child-focused humanitarian and development organisation, in the course of its response to COVID-19 in 70 different countries, this article explores the ways in which faith groups and faith leaders responded to the perceived needs of their communities. While keen to offer psychosocial support to people suffering anxiety and fear in the context of the crisis, this has often been integrated with spiritual support. Analysing their work from the framework of a rights-based approach to mental health, we conclude that they did contribute to psychosocial support through their MHPSS, in part through their provision of spiritual care. However, spiritual well-being should not be conflated with psychosocial well-being. While faith groups play an important role in MHPSS, their primary role is to offer spiritual care

A Faith-Inspired Way of Working

The COVID-19 pandemic has proved to be much more than a health emergency, with serious social, political and economic consequences. The diverse challenges for people and communities, specifically in low- and middle-income and fragile contexts, have necessitated multi-sectoral responses from international humanitarian and development actors. For many international faith-inspired organisations (IFIOs), these responses included a faith dimension. Drawing on interviews with staff working in IFIOs during the pandemic, this paper will argue that the COVID-19 pandemic saw many, although not all, IFIOs engage with local faith actors and local communities of faith more quickly, and in increasingly diverse and meaningful ways, than during previous comparable public health crises. This shift in willingness to engage with faith and religion at the local level has been reflected, to some extent, by the broader humanitarian sphere. The COVID-19 pandemic therefore marks an important step towards more faith-literate humanitarian responses, with many IFIOs at the forefront of this progress

Localisation in the context of UK government engagement with the humanitarian reform agenda

From Frontiers via Jisc Publications RouterAlastair Ager - ORCID: 0000-0002-9474-3563 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9474-3563Localisation is a key element of the humanitarian reform agenda. However, there are continuing debates regarding its form and emphasis, linked to understandings of the local, the role of the state and the implications for interpretation of humanitarian principles of “de-internationalised” humanitarian response. This paper considers UK engagement with the localisation agenda, particularly through examination of the policies and programmes of the Department for International Development (DFID). The UK was a major contributor to dialogue on localisation at the World Humanitarian Summit of 2016 and has subsequently shown strong support for Grand Bargain commitments and implementation of a larger proportion of programmes involving cash transfers. Overall, however, advance on this agenda has been limited. The paper notes three major areas of constraint. First, logistical concerns have frequently been noted, particularly with respect to tasks such as procurement and financial monitoring. This has limited the engagement of many local actors lacking organisational capacity in these areas. Second, conceptual ambiguity has also played a significant role. Localisation is poorly theorised, and the roles, functions and capacities—beyond procurement of supplies and emergency technical assistance—that local actors may be able to fulfil far more effectively than international ones are not frequently addressed. Narrowly framed understandings of principles such as independence and impartiality, for instance, appear to severely limit confidence in engaging with local religious actors. Third, political considerations appear to have increasingly limited the space for more radical interpretations of the implications of localisation. Successive UK Secretaries of State for International Development have defended the commitment to a fixed proportion of Gross National Income (GNI) for development assistance based on strong public support for UK aid expenditure to reflect national interests and values. In this context, there are few clear political incentives to cede power over decision-making regarding UK Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) to national and local actors in a manner required for fundamental localisation of humanitarian response. Even where there is a clear potential UK interest—for example, bolstering capacity of local actors in contexts vulnerable to humanitarian emergency to avert more costly emergency response—the public perception of capacity strengthening (compared to life-saving humanitarian actions) mitigates against such moves in a climate of contested public spending. The establishment of a merged Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office in 2020 signals the likelihood of a reframing of localisation. While some advancement in terms of some logistical and conceptual barriers may be anticipated, issues of both national interest and public perceptions of national interest seem likely to continue to constrain a more radical implementation of localisation, particularly with current suspension of the commitment to spend 0.7% of GNI on ODA.3pubpu

A faith-inspired way of working: an exploration of International Faith-Inspired Organisation's local faith-inspired humanitarian partnerships and programs in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in fragile urban contexts

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on the lives of many of the worlds poorest. COVID-19 has proved to be much more than a health emergency; as well as the immediate health-related concerns of COVID-19, measures to stem the spread of the virus have created additional livelihood, protection and mental health challenges. As seen during previous health crises, the COVID-19 pandemic has intersected in various ways with faith, religion and spirituality. The pandemic has deeply affected faith life and faith actors at all levels - from International Faith-Inspired Organisations (IFIOs) to Local Faith Actors (LFAs) and Local Communities of Faith (LCFs) – who have remobilised to respond to the health crisis and its secondary impacts. This thesis draws on the experiences of staff working for IFIOs during the pandemic to argue that IFIO’s local faith-inspired partnerships and programs have the potential to make responses to humanitarian crises more effective. This thesis details how IFIOs engaged increasingly rapidly, and with increased breadth and depth, with LFAs and LCFs in response to COVID-19, in comparison to previous crises. This suggests lessons learnt which have been reinforced by the COVID-19 pandemic, that speak to the potential value-add of locally-led faith-inspired partnerships and programs. This potential value-add is mitigated by certain challenges, as well as some persistent gaps in understanding, including a lack of knowledge around how best to engage with LFAs and LCFs in fragile urban contexts. While IFIOs modes and levels of engagement with faith, religion and spirituality vary, their experience in this area means they have a potential leadership role to play in in promoting faith literacy and locally-led faith engagement within the humanitarian sphere to leverage the potential value-add of localised faith engagement for more effective responses to crises

Hydrogen Peroxide Inhibition of Bicupin Oxalate Oxidase

Oxalate oxidase is a manganese containing enzyme that catalyzes the oxidation of oxalate to carbon dioxide in a reaction that is coupled with the reduction of oxygen to hydrogen peroxide. Oxalate oxidase from Ceriporiopsis subvermispora (CsOxOx) is the first fungal and bicupin enzyme identified that catalyzes this reaction. Potential applications of oxalate oxidase for use in pancreatic cancer treatment, to prevent scaling in paper pulping, and in biofuel cells have highlighted the need to understand the extent of the hydrogen peroxide inhibition of the CsOxOx catalyzed oxidation of oxalate. We apply a membrane inlet mass spectrometry (MIMS) assay to directly measure initial rates of carbon dioxide formation and oxygen consumption in the presence and absence of hydrogen peroxide. This work demonstrates that hydrogen peroxide is both a reversible noncompetitive inhibitor of the CsOxOx catalyzed oxidation of oxalate and an irreversible inactivator. The build-up of the turnover-generated hydrogen peroxide product leads to the inactivation of the enzyme. The introduction of catalase to reaction mixtures protects the enzyme from inactivation allowing reactions to proceed to completion. Circular dichroism spectra indicate that no changes in global protein structure take place in the presence of hydrogen peroxide. Additionally, we show that the CsOxOx catalyzed reaction with the three carbon substrate mesoxalate consumes oxygen which is in contrast to previous proposals that it catalyzed a non-oxidative decarboxylation with this substrate

Justice reasoning and responsibility reasoning in relation to commitment and happiness in long-term marriages

Marriage, as a microcosm of society, involves the moral dilemmas of conflicting rights, competing claims, and responsibility for decisions. This study focused on the moral development of the individual-in-relationship using commitment and happiness as the common ground. The purposes of this study were (a) to describe justice reasoning and responsibility reasoning of individuals in long-term marriages and (b) to assess the relationship of justice and responsibility reasoning to commitment and perceived happiness. Separate in-depth interviews were conducted with 30 individuals in 15 long-term marriages. Data collected were responses to three hypothetical dilemmas, four real-life dilemmas, and questions on commitment and happiness

Adapting to Crisis

This article draws on our experiences of carrying out PhD research on migration during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are all involved with the University College London Migration Research Unit (MRU), and our PhD research explores the lived experiences of migrants and people affected by migration. This is the first of two articles in this issue of Migration and Society addressing the implications of COVID-19 on migration research from the perspective of postgraduate researchers. In this article, we firstly reflect on how “crises,” including the COVID-19 pandemic, inevitably shape contexts of migration research. We then share how COVID-19 has shaped our relationship to “the field” and our formal research institutions. Finally, we share how we have adapted our methodologies in response to COVID-19 and, considering the complex ethical and practical challenges posed by this context, reflect on what it means to make methodological “adaptations” in times of overlapping crises

2011 case law update

This power point presentation addresses four legal cases, James v. Anne’s, Matute v. Palmetto Health Baptist, Pilgrim v. Eaton and Long v. Sealed Air Corp

BCR’s CDP Digital Imaging Best Practices, Version 2.0

This is the published version.These Best Practices — also referred to as the CDP Best Practices -- have been created through the collaboration of working groups pulled from library, museum and archive practitioners. Version 1 was created through funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services through a grant to the University of Denver and the Colorado Digitization Program in 2003. Version 2 of the guidelines were published by BCR in 2008 and represents a significant update of practices under the leadership of their CDP Digital Imaging Best Practices Working Group. The intent has been to help standardize and share protocols governing the implementation of digital projects. The result of these collaborations is a set of best practice documents that cover issues such as digital imaging, Dublin Core metadata and digital audio. These best practice documents are intended to help with the design and implementation of digitization projects. Because they were collaboratively designed by experts in the field, you can be certain they include the best possible information, in addition to having been field tested and proven in practice. These best practice documents are an ongoing collaborative project, and LYRASIS will add information and new documents as they are developed