At just fifteen years of age, Aly was forced to flee his home with his family, eventually finding refuge in a crowded settlement near Burkina Faso. But safety didn’t end his struggles. Hounded by painful memories, Aly was plagued by night terrors and insomnia. After his mother attended a mental health awareness session in the settlement, she recognized his symptoms and brought him to an ICRC-backed medical center—one of the few in the region. Through drawing and writing, therapy helped Aly work through guilt and trauma. Today, he is back in school, making friends, and finally sleeping through the night.
This is the power of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS), delivered at the right time in the right way. Yet too often, these essential services are an afterthought in disaster preparedness and response plans—if they’re considered at all.
Action lagging behind awareness
Awareness of mental health needs has grown in recent years, with the United Nations and Wellcome Trust announcing in September 2025 a US$13.2 million initiative to support scaling up mental health response in humanitarian settings. Yet overall, investment and capacity have not kept pace.
According to the WHO Mental Health Atlas 2024, over 1 billion people worldwide live with mental health conditions. However, mental health receives only 2% of national health budgets on average—a figure that has remained virtually unchanged for the past eight years. In emergency contexts, this figure shrinks even further – mental health programs receive a mere 1% of development assistance for health[1] . This is despite the fact that investment in mental health is money well spent: research shows that every $1 invested in mental health yields $4 in return in better health and ability to work.
Such stagnation is dangerously out of step with the challenges we face. The last decade has borne witness to a series of disasters in rapid succession. Some were local, like earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria, floods in Brazil and Spain and wildfires in Australia and the USA. Others sent shockwaves worldwide: the COVID-19 pandemic, an escalating climate crisis and a rising number of conflicts across the globe. These have taken a heavy toll – physical and psychological – on communities, on families and individuals alike.
We cannot afford to keep responding with half measures. Left untreated, psychological distress fuels anxiety, depression, and other conditions that ripple through families and communities, weakening recovery and resilience. It diminishes people’s ability to care for themselves and their loved ones, to return to work, and to contribute to their communities, resulting in losses that add up to an estimated USD $1 trillion every year in costs to the global economy — in addition to the immense human suffering borne by individuals, families and communities. The need is dire. Of the 300 million people today who need humanitarian assistance, 66 million are grappling with mental health conditions, often cut off from desperately-needed care.
For the sake of both individual wellbeing and collective resilience, MHPSS must no longer be treated as optional.
MHPSS: Not one-size-fits-all
MHPSS is not an exercise in identifying a successful intervention, then building from the exact same blueprint, country to country, crisis to crisis. Every community and experience is unique, and so interventions must be tailored to time, place and person. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies have vast experience in crisis response, across contexts and borders, measuring success not only by clinical outcomes but also by whether support is accessible, context-appropriate, and responsive to the needs of those most at risk.
The ICRC and the Z Zurich Foundation (the Foundation), a charitable foundation established by various members of Zurich Insurance Group, have entered a multi-year collaboration to support and expand MHPSS in emergencies in August 2025. This collaboration will help the ICRC further advance its work in strengthening emergency MHPSS capacities, integrating mental health considerations into humanitarian response, and developing key tools to improve care for conflict-affected populations. The support from the Z Zurich Foundation will contribute to developing practical guidance to help ensure MHPSS activities are effectively integrated into emergency measures across diverse contexts. The capacity building element of this collaboration will help drive sustainable impact and resilience.
Using the Pyramid of Care framework, the ICRC works to build adaptable, context-specific models that are embedded in public services and co-designed with affected communities and local professionals. They support the development and integration of MHPSS within existing public services, such as health and education, ensuring that support is safe, culturally appropriate, and sustainable. In many countries, the organization works closely with Ministries of Health and Justice to build capacity, train personnel, and scale up national MHPSS responses.
A shared goal: public, private and humanitarian sector roles in MHPSS
But neither public institutions nor humanitarian organizations, such as the ICRC, can shoulder the burden alone. With limited financial and human resources, a shortage of trained professionals, persistent stigma around mental health, and competing priorities during emergencies, cross-sector collaboration is essential.
Rather than a challenge, this should be seen as an opportunity: the private sector can add real value to humanitarian and public efforts. Beyond funding for MHPSS, the Z Zurich Foundation engages the employees of various members of the Zurich Insurance Group to volunteer their time in support of humanitarian goals.
Mental health is not a luxury—it is a lifeline. In emergency response, supplying mental health support is as essential as distributing aid parcels and providing a safe place to sleep. The ICRC sees every day how timely, culturally appropriate MHPSS helps people heal and rebuild their lives. Sustained investment, national ownership, and coordination are key to scaling up this support.
By stepping up their support, private actors like the Z Zurich Foundation can play a critical role in shaping a more resilient, responsive, and compassionate humanitarian system. When mental health and psychosocial support are woven into disaster management, crisis response becomes more than a short-term fix — it becomes the foundation for long-term healing.
About Z Zurich Foundation
The Z Zurich Foundation works alongside Zurich Insurance Group employees and other stakeholders as well as with governments and NGOs in pursuit of a future where people can thrive in the face of increasing climate hazards and catastrophes, where those of us feeling the stresses of life are empowered to speak up, and where the marginalized in our society can reach their full potential.
The Z Zurich Foundation is a Swiss-based charitable foundation established by members of the Zurich Insurance Group. It is the main vehicle by which Zurich Insurance Group delivers on its global community investment strategy.
Visit the Z Zurich Foundation’s website to learn more about its work: https://zurich.foundation. Follow Z Zurich Foundation on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
[1] Although DAMH did increase between 2007 and 2013, it remains low both in absolute terms and as a proportion of total development assistance for health (DAH). The average annual DAMH between 2007 and 2013 was US$133.57 million, and the proportion of DAH attributed to mental health is less than 1%. DAH: Development assistance for health. Assessing Development Assistance for Mental Health in Developing Countries: 2007–2013 – PMC
