Humanitarian psychological support as an organized field is relatively young. Pioneers in the field were involved primarily in providing psychological support to refugees and internally displaced persons in conflict and nonconflict situations. This article describes basic principles for the design of psychological support programs and interventions. The International Federation of Red Cross and...

Background: Whereas the association between social support and psychological distress has been well-established through both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, less is known about whether social support influences rate of change in psychological distress over time. Nor is it clear whether social support predicts baseline psychological distress, or, more importantly, whether social suppor...

INTRODUCTION The objective of the study was to investigate the course of psychological distress in early rheumatoid arthritis patients and to explore the strength of its associations with disease-related variables over time. A further aim focused specifically on the associations between social support and psychological distress. METHODS The study had a longitudinal design, with four annual me...

Psychological well-being benefits of receiving social support are well-established. Growing evidence also suggests parallel benefits of giving support. However, much less attention has been given to understanding the psychological correlates of imbalance in giving and receiving social support. We examined associations between social support (given, received, and imbalance) and psychological wel...