Netherlands

This personal reflection is based on the author's experiences, a native Liberian, in her country at the beginning of the 2014 Ebola epidemic. It includes her account of events as Ebola cases and related deaths began to rise and the response appeared inadequate. Examples are presented where a robust psychosocial and mental health response was critically required, but most often lacking.

This article presents the results of a research project whose objective was to describe and analyse how people seeking asylum in the Netherlands make sense of their experience. The broader aim of this study was to provide information that could lead to improved mental health care (Kramer, Bala, Dijk van, & Öry, 2003). This article accordingly ends with suggestions to implement the study’s findings in other countries where refugees face uncertainty.

This article is about a community based intervention program in the Netherlands. In this program, asylum seekers and refugees are trained to provide psycho-education and psychosocial support to fellow groups of refugees and asylum seekers. These trained refugees work in their own language and culture, with a professional coach from a local mental health institute. The group courses consist of psycho-education, psychosocial support and empowerment.

Asylum requests by victims of torture who have fled to the Netherlands are often rejected. In these cases, the torture stories of the asylum seekers have failed to convince officials judging their asylum request. The author studied the cases of asylum seekers whose claims were first rejected, but then supported by Amnesty International, and eventually, after a court appeal, received residency.

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