Introduction: Women have psychosocial challenges but perinatal interventions are not making much impact on their mental status hence the interventions need scaling up. This study involved measuring and analysing the extent to which levels of the psychosocial markers reflect effectiveness of the mental health interventions offered by midwives. Methods: The study was conducted at Mpilo Central Hospital Maternity Bulawayo, for the main reason that it receives women referrals from 5 out of the 10 provinces in the country with a total catchment of almost 50% of the country’s population. The maternity hospital has a full complement of all the five maternity units. A quantitative approach administrating a Quality-of-Life Enjoyment and Satisfaction Short form (Q-LES-SF) scale was used. The scale ranged from “very poor” to “very good” with “poor”, “fair”, “good” components in between was used to measure the psychosocial scores on a purposive sample of 300 women in the third trimester of pregnancy. The participants had attended at least three antenatal reviews where psychosocial interventions and mental health assessment, monitoring and evaluations are normally carried. The quantitative data was analysed using descriptive statistics on SPSS Version 23 package. Results: The Q-LES-Q-SF psychosocial scale which was revealed that women had psychosocial challenges without adequate mental health interventions to ameliorate these challenges. The study demonstrated a bimodal sample with peaks at the “Good” and “Poor” set points. The relationships of the psychosocial and satisfaction scores along the scale continuum showed that “Poor” (33%) Q-LES-Q-SF was higher, followed by “Good” (29%), followed by “Fair” (25%), followed by “Very Poor” and “Very Poor” and “Very Good” being equal (6.5%) in a normal distribution pattern. The likelihood of the demographic variables influencing the Q-LES-Q-F scale were not necessarily linked to the quality-of-life enjoyment and satisfaction of the expectant women during prenatal period. However, age, education level acquired and marital status showed a linearity towards the “Good” when individually rated against the Q-LES-Q-F. Discussion: The psychosocial scores were generally both poor and good indicating that perinatal interventions are needed are needed to making much impact on the mental and social wellbeing of women in the third trimester of pregnancy. The good to very good Q-LES-Q-F scores are a requirement in expectant mothers as this has a strong bearing on the wellbeing of the foetus and mother post parturition. Apparently, the need for scaling up psychosocial support, monitoring, evaluation and interventions to third trimester pregnant women by midwives cannot be overemphasized.

Background: Interventions aimed at improving accessing of health care services, including HIV testing, remain a priority in global HIV eradication efforts. Grassroot Soccer Zimbabwe (GRSZ) is an adolescent health organisation that uses the popularity of soccer to promote healthy behaviours. We assessed HIV knowledge levels, risky behaviours and attitudes in school going adolescents and young adults who attended GRSZ programmes and determined if HIV knowledge levels were associated with increased levels of accessing of health care services by youths. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study carried out on 450 participants aged 13-30 years who attended at least one of the three programmes offered by GRSZ. Self-administered and self-reporting questionnaires were used to collect information on participants' demographics, knowledge on HIV and reproductive health, sources of information, access to HIV and reproductive health services and attitudes and risky behaviours. Results: A total of 392 (87.1%) responses were received. High HIV and reproductive health knowledge levels were recorded (77.7%) on our scale with females recording higher levels (81.1%) than males (71.1%). The majority of participants (72%) indicated willingness to abstain from risky behaviours such as use of drugs and attending youth sex parties. However about 33.3% of the participants who had sexual intercourse reported having condomless sex. There was marginal association between high HIV and reproductive health knowledge levels and accessing health care services in the past 24 months (p = 0.045). Conclusions: HIV and reproductive health knowledge levels were relatively high among adolescents and were associated with accessing health care services in the past 24 months. There however are some gaps associated with engaging in risky sexual behaviours such as condomless sex which could be addressed by using these findings to assist organizations working with adolescents, educators and policy makers in developing programmes that address adolescent sexual behaviours.

The need to create a harmonized process of handling mental health issues cropping up during the perinatal period in Zimbabwe cannot be over emphasized. The number of pregnant women needing perinatal management is growing. The number of trained midwifery nurse practitioner is also growing contributed from different nursing schools meaning different practice methodologies necessitating national guidelines to be adopted. A search of the literature revealed that the British Columbia guidelines provided a framework which could be adopted and adapted for use in the formulation of best practices guidelines to advance collaborative and supportive care as it applies to perinatal health care and client-centred childbirth. The guidelines were premised on the inkling that the use of the ideal strategy and a coordinated approach results in appropriate identification and effective management of mental pathology. The framework and the resultant guidelines, were able to guard against disturbances in the mental wellbeing of the women, whilst excluding the presence of mental disorders. The pillars of the framework we adopted to address dimensions namely: of instruction and avoidance, assessment and the verdict, therapy and self-administration, adapting and backup linkages. The adopted framework facilitates recognition, diagnosis, management and keeping track of ladies with identified mental health challenges. These were conceptualized as recognition, diagnosis, management and follow-up, giving a more promotive and preventive flair to the Zimbabwean perinatal mental health guidelines. Therefore, the theoretical framework for guidelines in mental health views mental stability is an interconnected quadlet of recognition of the tell-tail signs of the disease, diagnosis of the condition, management of the disease and follow-up of the those who have been successfully managed for possible relapses.