The MHPSS Minimum Service Package in Context: From Service Commitments to Capable Practice
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This version was adapted, rewritten, or refined with AI assistance from existing source material and/or human editorial input. Deep Emotional Work Academy retains editorial responsibility.
Edited with AI
By Matthias Behrends
Review & Opinion
A service can offer a place in a support group and still leave an important question unanswered: what can the person running it actually help someone do?
For people working in humanitarian settings, that question belongs beside another: how does this group connect with practical assistance, protection, health care and the rest of the response? A capable practitioner needs somewhere to refer. A coordinated response needs capable practitioners. Neither account is complete on its own.
The Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Minimum Service Package, usually shortened to MHPSS MSP, helps teams connect those responsibilities. Its central contribution is a shared account of how support should be organized and delivered. It reaches beyond primary mental health care to community support, protection, focused care and psychological interventions. [1] For the practitioners, educators and humanitarian professionals whom Deep Emotional Work Academy (DEWA) trains, that service context matters. It does not, by itself, close every gap in the methods available to them.
Which package are we reading?
This article uses the December 2022 English edition of the Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Minimum Service Package, issued by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC). Its MHPSS Reference Group developed it. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) led development with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). This is an inter-agency package. [1]
WHO's August 2025 overview presents the MSP alongside workshop materials, sector guides, assessment resources, indicators and a training directory. These support implementation; their later dates do not make the core publication a 2025 edition. [2]
UNICEF's July 2024 education brief is one example of sector-specific application. It helps education professionals integrate MHPSS into emergency education programmes. [6]
The distinction matters when preparing training or a proposal. Name the publication being used, then identify any supplementary tools separately. Otherwise two teams can appear to be discussing the same guidance while relying on different materials.
A common account of what a response must provide
The MSP identifies priority humanitarian activities using guidance, available evidence and expert consensus. Its users include coordinators, implementers, technical advisers and donors across sectors. One organization is not expected to deliver everything. [1]
That makes it useful beyond the mental health specialist's desk. A programme manager deciding what to fund, an educator examining a proposed partnership and a practitioner asking where their work belongs all need a shared account of the response. They do not need identical roles or identical skills.
WHO describes the package as helping different sectors determine which MHPSS activities to provide during emergencies. Its associated indicator bank supports examining reach, quality and impact. That is a more useful starting point for a partnership than the broad promise to “provide psychosocial support”. [2]
For DEWA, the practical question is where a particular emotional-work capability belongs in that response. It should have a stated purpose and a connection to other support. It should also be possible to explain what the practitioner does, rather than use the service label as the whole explanation.
The architecture connects services with their conditions
The package's 22 activities sit in four sections. Each activity has core actions and additional actions to consider. [1]
| Section | Main concern |
|---|---|
| 1. Coordination and assessment | How agencies work together and understand needs and resources |
| 2. Essentials for every MHPSS programme | Design, evaluation, staff care and competence |
| 3. Programme activities | Community support through to focused care and psychological interventions |
| 4. Particular settings | Infectious-disease care and support for people deprived of liberty |
This architecture makes a useful distinction visible. An activity needs conditions that allow it to work. Having a room, an attendance sheet and a facilitator does not explain whether the service has a suitable method, adequate support or a meaningful way to examine results.
Nor does competence in one activity establish competence in every other activity. Psychological first aid, ongoing group support and a defined psychological intervention involve different purposes and demands. The Learner Library's PFA discussion examines one of those boundaries in more detail.
These organizational responsibilities matter. Our reading is that the MSP should also make intervention choices more visible. A service commitment needs a method capable of addressing its stated purpose, and people prepared to deliver it. Reading the MSP does not supply a technique manual or qualify someone to deliver the activities it describes.
Follow one person through the connections
Consider an invented example. A displaced adult attends a community support group. They describe persistent distress, disrupted sleep and difficulty keeping everyday commitments. They also lack reliable transport and are uncertain whether their accommodation is safe.
A facilitator might know a practice intended to help someone feel steadier. Before proposing it, they still need to understand what help the person wants and whether it falls within their role. An immediate practical concern may deserve attention before an exercise. A need beyond the facilitator's remit requires a route to appropriate help.
The service questions extend further. Who can address the transport problem? Is the suggested referral reachable? What happens if the participant needs support between meetings? Who supports the facilitator when the situation exceeds their competence?
These questions are DEWA's application of the service-and-intervention distinction, not a delivery protocol or a diagnosis. Their purpose is to prevent a single activity from becoming the answer to every difficulty that arrives at its door.
UNFPA's October 2026 guidance illustrates why the surrounding service matters. It complements the MSP for gender-based violence and sexual and reproductive health services, emphasizing survivor-centred support, confidentiality and coordination. A general emotional-work skill does not replace the responsibilities of those services. [3]
Equally, organizing a referral does not explain what an intervention can achieve when it is offered. We need both accounts: the person's route through support and the actual work undertaken with them.
Service organization and practical methodology are different tasks
The distinction is central to Matthias Behrends's reading of the package. Speaking about the importance of organizing services, he puts his professional position this way: “Although that is important, it doesn't close the methodological gaps that I see.”
A well-organized response and a sufficient repertoire of practical methods are different achievements. If a team cannot identify a suitable method for a particular need, more coordination alone will not supply that capability. The gap has to be named and examined at the level of the actual work with the person.
That does not make the MSP merely administrative. Activity 3.12 makes several delivery requirements explicit: suitable evidence-based intervention materials, preparation assessed through demonstrated skills, continuing supervision and referral arrangements. [1, p.74] The MSP therefore already connects service design with intervention selection and competence. A requirement to select and deliver an appropriate intervention still leaves the team to establish which method fits the need and what its evidence supports.
Choosing the method and delivering it are connected responsibilities
A further layer of guidance helps with that task. WHO's 2024 psychological interventions implementation manual addresses how defined interventions become available within existing services. It covers planning, contextual adaptation, workforce preparation, identifying and supporting potential participants, and monitoring and evaluation. [4]
For DEWA's teaching, we distinguish two responsibilities. MHPSS consultants and experts steer evidence-informed selection for the context and ensure adequate training is available. Practitioners need demonstrated competence to deliver the selected techniques within their remit. Some people hold both roles. A consultant need not personally perform every technique they help a service select.
That is our role distinction, not a universal job description attributed to IASC. It keeps attention on the connection between an informed choice and its delivery. A team can arrange excellent training for an unsuitable method. It can also choose a suitable intervention and fail to prepare the people expected to deliver it.
WHO and UNICEF's Ensuring Quality in Psychological Support (EQUIP) initiative provides a concrete example of competence-focused preparation: role plays and skill assessment help trainers examine performance as well as knowledge. [5]
For a learner, the resulting question is specific: can I demonstrate the capability this activity requires? Understanding a framework, attending a course and delivering an intervention are related achievements. Each needs an account of what has actually been learned or demonstrated.
Keep the guidance and the evidence in their proper places
This is a reading of guidance and its practical implications, not a systematic review of MSP effectiveness. The sources discussed here do not establish a package-level effect size or a comparison showing that implementing the entire MSP produces better outcomes than a named alternative response.
WHO's 2025 overview describes the package's intended contribution to a better emergency response. An operational rationale is valuable, but it does not answer every outcome question. [2] We should distinguish the reason a service is recommended from measured findings about a particular intervention, population and result.
Suppose an evaluation reports improvement after a complete psychological programme. That finding does not automatically establish the independent effect of every exercise inside it. Nor does a report of strong attendance establish that participants' distress changed. An evaluation needs to match the claim being made.
The same discipline applies to DEWA. A method's inclusion within a service does not transfer WHO or IASC endorsement to it. Evidence for a component does not automatically validate a Deep Emotional Work (DEW) combination. Claims of better or more durable results require the relevant comparison, outcome and follow-up.
This leaves room for a serious practical ambition: expand the repertoire of suitable methods that practitioners can actually deliver. It also keeps that ambition open to examination. We cannot establish an advantage merely by describing an approach as more direct, more integrated or more emotionally focused.
Use the package to sharpen the next conversation
For a DEWA learner preparing to work with a humanitarian team, the useful next step is to examine one proposed activity closely. Ask what need it addresses, what happens during it, why that approach was chosen, what delivery competence is required, and where other needs will be met.
A programme leader should be able to explain who steers those choices and how training and support will be secured. A practitioner should be able to explain their own role and demonstrate the relevant skills. Where the available repertoire cannot meet the stated purpose, name the gap clearly.
The MSP gives that conversation a shared service context. DEWA's contribution must be concrete within it: practical emotional-work methods, capable delivery and clear limits connected to the wider response. The useful test is whether the service commitment can be traced all the way to what happens with the person seeking help.
Primary sources
- Inter-Agency Standing Committee. Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Minimum Service Package. December 2022 English edition. Cover, acknowledgements; printed pp. 5-7, 16-17, 24, 73-75.
- WHO. Ensuring vital mental health and psychosocial support reaches people in need. 19 August 2025.
- UNFPA. Guidance to support the mental health and psychosocial well-being of GBV and SRH service users in humanitarian settings. October 2026. Publisher's overview.
- WHO. Psychological interventions implementation manual: integrating evidence-based psychological interventions into existing services. 6 March 2024. Publisher's overview.
- WHO and UNICEF. WHO and UNICEF release EQUIP: a new platform to increase quality of psychological support. 30 March 2022.
- UNICEF. Integrating MHPSS into EiE using the Minimum Service Package. July 2024. Publisher's overview.
Professional boundary
Deep Emotional Work Academy materials are non-clinical professional education by default. They are not medical or psychological advice, diagnosis, treatment, psychotherapy, cure, or a guaranteed mental-health outcome. Any clinical use, patient-facing application, or integration into institutional standards of practice requires review, adaptation, approval, and supervision by qualified authorities within the receiving institution. Those decisions remain within the responsibility, qualifications, governance structures, and legal scope of the participating professionals and host institution. Matthias Behrends contributes as an educator and instructor. All activities in instructor-led institutional training require the involvement of a licensed clinician and a designated supervisor.
