Adolescent Wellbeing after the Türkiye Earthquakes

In 2025, the Care and Protection of Children (CPC) committed to partner with Turkish organization Maya Vakfi to implement the Early Adolescent Skills for Emotions (EASE) program to support adolescent earthquake survivors in Türkiye and generate evidence for scaling into other disaster-affected settings and climate emergencies. Developed by the World Health Organization and UNICEF, EASE is an evidence-based, low-cost, community-delivered mental health intervention. Over two years, this project will evaluate the feasibility of implementing EASE in earthquake-affected communities and examine its impact on mental health symptoms and related secondary outcomes among 64 Turkish and Syrian refugee adolescents and their caregivers in Şanlıurfa, Türkiye. Expected outcomes include improved mental health and well-being among adolescents, strengthened capacity of partners to deliver evidence-based mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) services, and increased access to publicly available materials tailored to local contexts. This will inform the scaling of EASE across provinces in Türkiye and support context-sensitive MHPSS interventions in disaster and displacement settings.

Approach

Columbia University’s Care and Protection of Children (CPC) Learning Network commits to train and supervise three Maya Vakfi staff. CPC will provide funding and materials for a clinical psychologist, clinical supervisor and translator to receive WHO-approved EASE training (ten days) .

With CPC support, Maya Vakfi will then deliver the EASE program to 64 adolescents and their caregivers. Four cohorts each with eight adolescent participants will participate in a nine-week program consisting of seven sessions, pre-intervention and post-intervention assessments. Groups will be stratified by gender and age (10-12 years and 13-15 years) . Caregivers will participate in three sessions designed to promote caregiver wellbeing and parenting skills. The EASE facilitator and translator will receive weekly supervision for 1.5 hours. Maya Vakfi will administer pre- and post- evaluations to all EASE participants. These will include assessments of mental health and psychosocial wellbeing, child-caregiver relationship dynamics and additional implementation considerations guided by science frameworks.

Together, CPC and Maya Vakfi will design and conduct focus groups and key informant interviews. Maya Vakfi will conduct focus groups with each EASE group (k=16 groups, n=128 participants) after implementation of the EASE program. CPC and Maya Vakfi will conduct key informant interviews with stakeholders including government, mental health service providers, and intergovernmental organizations including UN agencies, the WHO EASE team, and WHO Türkiye country office. Focus groups and interviews will explore barriers and facilitators to program reach and retention, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, and scalability and sustainability.

CPC and Maya Vakfi will use research findings to inform the development of a blueprint- implementation plan for integrating EASE into their existing programming and services that currently reach approximately 7000 people per year, including in other earthquake-affected communities and provinces in Türkiye. After two years, we will expand the program to earthquake-affected refugee and host populations in additional provinces in Türkiye, including Hatay, Adıyaman and Istanbul.

Months 0-6: The first six months of the project will be dedicated to project set-up, obtaining the necessary ethical and regulatory approvals, and finalizing the development and adaptation of project materials. During this phase CPC will train Maya Vakfi staff in the EASE intervention.

Months 6-14: Sixty-four adolescents and their caregivers (32 Turkish and 32 Syrian adolescent-caregiver dyads) will be enrolled in EASE. All participants will complete pre- and post-intervention assessments evaluating mental health, psychosocial wellbeing, and caregiver-adolescent relationship dynamics.

Months 15-18: The research team will conduct qualitative key informant interviews and focus group discussions to evaluate EASE implementation and generate insights into the scalability and sustainability of EASE within the Turkish context.

Months 19-21: All data will be analyzed and key external dissemination products will be developed (e.g. policy briefs, academic manuscripts, presentations) .

Months 22-24: Findings will be presented to study participants and the community through local dissemination events to ensure input on data interpretations and to promote accountability. The research and implementation teams will present findings through a global webinar targeting UN agencies, government stakeholders, service providers, and researchers.

Background

The devastating Türkiye-Syria earthquakes in February 2023 displaced over 660,000 children and adolescents in Türkiye, many of whom still face inadequate shelter, disrupted education and lack of essential services (UNFPA 2024) . These stressors have contributed to mental health problems among earthquake-affected adolescents in Şanlıurfa, one of the most devastated provinces. Existing mental health services are insufficient to meet population needs. Early intervention is critical, as untreated mental health issues during adolescence negatively impact health, social, educational and economic outcomes.

Columbia University’s Care and Protection of Children (CPC) Learning Network will partner with Turkish organization Maya Vakfi to evaluate the feasibility of an evidence-based, low-cost, community-delivered mental health intervention: the Early Adolescent Skills for Emotions (EASE) program, developed by the World Health Organization and UNICEF. This will be the first implementation of EASE among Turkish and Syrian refugee earthquake survivors. The project will use an implementation science lens to generate evidence for scaling EASE in disaster-affected settings. Specifically, this project will:

Evaluate the acceptability and feasibility of implementing EASE in earthquake-affected communities in Türkiye. This will include exploration of barriers and facilitators to EASE reach and retention, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, scalability, and sustainability.

Examine the acceptability and feasibility of evaluating the effectiveness of EASE on mental health symptoms and related secondary outcomes among adolescents and their caregivers in Şanlıurfa, Türkiye.

Expected outcomes include improved mental health and psychosocial wellbeing among adolescent participants, strengthened capacity of local partners to deliver evidence-based MHPSS services, and publicly available program materials tailored to the context. Over two years, 131 individuals will directly benefit and more than 14,000 individuals served by Maya Vakfi will indirectly benefit. Findings will inform strategies for scaling EASE across additional provinces in Türkiye and contribute to global evidence on MHPSS interventions in disaster and displacement settings.

Progress Update

CPC is seeking 162,000 USD and support from Arabic-speaking researchers and mental health practitioners to expand the project to reach Syrian refugee adolescents and their caregivers in Turkiye. Currently, CPC has secured funding to implement EASE with 32 Turkish adolescents and their caregivers in order to establish acceptability and feasibility of EASE within this population and context. Additional financial support is needed to cover the adaptation and translation of EASE program materials for 32 Syrian adolescent refugees and their caregivers, salary/compensation for additional research and implementation staff, as well as direct program implementation costs and materials. We also plan to strengthen Maya Vakfi’s existing partnership with Turkish government ministries including the Ministry of Family and Social Services and local governorates to bring this program to scale.,CPC will make the blueprint for EASE implementation publicly available. CPC and Maya Vakfi will also co-host a global webinar detailing the implementation plan, lessons learned, and recommendations for further research and scale-up, for other organizations interested in adolescent MHPSS.