Community-Based Mental Health Care is for Everyone Everywhere
Community-based mental health care is for everyone everywhere.
-Vincent Mujune, Country Director, StrongMinds Uganda
StrongMinds is so excited to be in New York this week, attending the Multistakeholder Hearing for the 4th High-Level Meeting on NCDs and Mental Health. I’m thrilled to be here because this meeting represents a unique opportunity to secure global government commitments to create and implement new paradigms that place good mental health and well-being at the center of national development.
As UN member states, UN and WHO experts, and civil society organizations gather today in New York to talk about best practices and policies for promoting mental health and well-being, I want to share a couple of key lessons we at StrongMinds have learned from the last 12 years of implementing community-based mental health care for depression: (1) Moving mental health care services into the community works, and (2) Mental health programs and policies must be multisectoral.
Community-based care works:
We know community-based mental health care works because we’ve been doing it effectively for more than a decade by treating depression using an evidence-based six-week interpersonal group talk therapy model (IPT-G) that is delivered by lay workers (community health workers, teachers, peers, etc.). Since 2013, we’ve treated almost a million people for depression, with three-quarters of them achieving depression-free status by the end of therapy. It is effective and cost-efficient to train and supervise lay workers to deliver first-line mental health care. Together with the MOH in Uganda, we have trained and supported Village Health Teams to treat 350,000 Ugandans for depression. These community health workers and their supervisors can plan a vital role in mental health service delivery, and their fair remuneration must be part of national mental health plans.
Mental Health must be multisectoral:
Our clients do not lead “single-sector” lives, and our policy and programmatic approaches cannot be “single-sector” either. Mental health conditions go far beyond the health clinic. We can reach people with mental health conditions by integrating mental health care into schools, prisons, climate change adaptation, disaster response, and refugee care.
At StrongMinds, we’re in the business of democratizing access to mental health care, and we hope the rest of the world will join us!