Mark van Ommeren

Mark van Ommeren is Head of the Mental Health Unit at WHO headquarters. He played a key role in the initiation and/or development of a number of WHO and inter-agency initiatives, including Sphere standards for humanitarian response, IASC Guidelines on MHPSS in Emergency Settings, WHO mhGAP programme, WHO Series on Low-Intensity Psychological Interventions, LIVE LIFE suicide prevention, IASC MHPSS Minimum Service Package, WHO Special Initiative on Mental Health, the World Mental Health Report, and the Joint Programme on Mental Health and Psychosocial Well-Being and Development of Children and Adolescents (with UNICEF).

Born and raised in the Netherlands, he worked for five years for a WHO Collaborating Centre, living in Nepal and Fiji, before joining WHO. He studied at the University of British Columbia (BSc in statistics; MA in counselling psychology) and received a doctorate - on impact of torture on Bhutanese refugees in Nepal - from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.