By Marit Sijbrandij, overall coordinator of STRENGTHS
Dear all,
We have exciting news to share with you regarding the STRENGTHS project. Despite the pandemic, which has restricted some of our activities, we have made important progress across many of the STRENGTHS subprojects.
The end phase
Almost all research projects are in their end phase or have been completed and the results will follow soon! The study in Azraq refugee camp by Richard Bryant and colleagues on group PM+, among over four hundred adult Syrian refugees and their children, will soon be published in PLOS Medicine. To already give you a hint, the study showed that group PM+ did help to reduce depression and personal problems.
PhD thesis on scalable interventions
This paper, but also a number of other very interesting and important articles about PM+ and EASE, were part of the PhD thesis of Aemal Akhtar of the University of New South Wales, Sydney, who very successfully defended his PhD thesis at the VU University last January 20th. Big congratulations to Aemal!
Other milestones
Another important milestone is that we reached the sample sizes for the RCT on group PM+ in Turkey, individual PM+ in the Netherlands, and Step-by-Step in Egypt. During the past months, we also noticed that many organisations asked us to share the Syrian Arabic manuals for individual and group PM+, which shows that the STRENGTHS products are in high demand. The STRENGTHS Community of Practice for PM+ trainers aims to address this need, as it is an online hub for PM+ trainers and all others interested.
Save the date for the symposium
After working from home for almost two years now, we cannot wait to meet you in person again. In the spring this year, hopefully a COVID-free period, we hope to see our colleagues again at one of two in-person meetings we are now organising. On May 18th, 2022, we will have a workshop for MHPSS providers, practitioners and implementers on PM+ in Istanbul, Turkey. On June 10th, 2022, we will present the results of STRENGTHS at a symposium in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Information about the two events will follow soon, so please stay tuned!
Warm regards,
Marit Sijbrandij
Overall coordinator of STRENGTHS