Addressing psychosocial needs is a vital part of disaster recovery and reconstruction, members of a Sichuan support team said at a meeting in Beijing on September 21.

At the meeting, which was jointly held by the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), team members shared their experiences and discussed the best practices of a community-based approach to ensure long-term psychosocial support in the post-disaster period of the Wenchuan earthquake and other natural disasters.

After the 8.0-magnitude Wenchuan quake on May 12, 2008, the UNFPA, with funding from the Finnish Government, supported a community-based psychosocial support project. It was jointly implemented by the MOH, the Peking University Institute of Mental Health (PUIMH), the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF), and the China National Committee on Aging (CNCA).

The project provided training in basic psychosocial support to more than 500 people including community health workers and members of local women's federations and senior-citizen associations. These participants then acted as the core group of trainers. Within the first year after the quake, more than 800 village leaders participated in the intervention training, and they managed to share their knowledge with 1 million villagers.

The project has established a national expert team and local core member teams in six seriously affected counties.

"I felt great pressure in the wake of the devastating earthquake," said Shi Yuan'an, Party secretary of Fuxing Village in Shifang, Sichuan Province. "There were so many problems. Over 4,000 villagers – who needed food, daily necessities, and shelter – frequently asked me to solve their problems. I had to distribute the huge amount of materials contributed throughout the country and the world. I really wanted to kill myself by engineering a car accident or drinking pesticide.

"At this crucial time, the project team arrived at my village and offered psychological prevention training. The project gave me a second life," he told reporters.

"The concept of the project is that everyone has the right to a healthy life and equal opportunities," said Yu Xin, director of the PUIMH.

Mariam Khan, UNFPA's Deputy Representative in China, said that the project enhanced the psychological strength of the communities as they responded to the earthquake. "Since the impact is long term and sustainable, we hope this approach can be promoted and benefit more people affected by disasters," she said.