Introduction

The Introduction explains why a response to humanitarian emergencies requires specialized humanitarian competencies. It sets the book’s goals and objectives, outlines the target audience and establishes the internal logic, establishes the flow, and specifies the target audience. When responding to humanitarian crises internationally, the mental health (MH) professionals become a part join the international, interdisciplinary, and cross-sectional humanitarian relief efforts. The Introduction outlines the book’s framework, which is global mental health (GMH). The book’s goal is to support GMH providers in their work, provide practical guidelines, and establish the integrity of the decision-making process in the humanitarian situation. It is different from prescribing rigid protocols, which can be counterproductive in unpredictable, volatile, and uncertain contexts of humanitarian emergencies. Introduction delineates the book’s core concepts, defines humanitarian competencies and substantiates the importance of specialized expertise for the GMH responders to humanitarian emergencies. The components of humanitarian competencies set the book’s structure that includes understanding of how humanitarian context shapes MH needs and creates special challenges for interventions. Other components are the knowledge of humanitarian systems and the accountability expectations from GMH providers when serving the most vulnerable people under the direst circumstances.