BackgroundUnmet needs for mental health treatment in low income countries are pervasive. If mental health is to be effectively integrated into primary health care in low income countries like India then grass-roots workers need to acquire relevant knowledge and skills to be able to recognise, refer and support people experiencing mental disorders in their own communities. This study aims to provide a mental health training intervention to community health workers in Bangalore Rural District, Karnataka, India, and to evaluate the impact of this training on mental health literacy.MethodsA pre-test post-test study design was undertaken with assessment of mental health literacy at three time points; baseline, completion of the training, and three month follow-up. Mental health literacy was assessed using the interviewer-administered Mental Health Literacy Survey. The training intervention was a four day course based on a facilitator's manual developed specifically for community health workers in India.Results70 community health workers from Doddaballapur, Bangalore Rural District were recuited for the study. The training course improved participants' ability to recognize a mental disorder in a vignette, and reduced participants' faith in unhelpful and potentially harmful pharmacological interventions. There was evidence of a minor reduction in stigmatizing attitudes, and it was unclear if the training resulted in a change in participants' faith in recovery following treatment.ConclusionThe findings from this study indicate that the training course demonstrated potential to be an effective way to improve some aspects of mental health literacy, and highlights strategies for strengthening the training course.

Objectives: Suicide rates in India are among the highest in the world, resulting in an estimated 250,000 suicide deaths annually. How the media communicates with the Indian public on the topic of suicide has thus far gone without sufficient scrutiny. The objective of our study was to assess the quality of newspaper reporting of suicide-related news in India against World Health Organization suicide reporting guidelines. Methods: We used content analysis to assess the quality of suicide reporting against World Health Organization guidelines in nine of the most highly read daily newspapers in the southern state of Tamil Nadu between June and December 2016. Five of the nine newspapers under review were in the top 20 most circulated daily newspapers in the country. Results: A total of 1681 suicide articles were retrieved. The mean number of suicide articles per day per newspaper was 0.9%, and 54.5% of articles were 10 sentences or less. The vast majority (95.9%) of articles primarily focused on reporting specific suicide incidents. Harmful reporting practices were very common (e.g. a detailed suicide method was reported in 43.3% of articles), while helpful reporting practices were rare (e.g. just 2.5% gave contact details for a suicide support service). Conclusions: We observed that a daily diet of short and explicit suicide-related news was served up to readers of newspapers. Attempts should be made to understand the perspectives of media professionals in relation to suicide reporting, and to devise strategies to boost the positive contribution that media can make to suicide prevention.

BackgroundDengue remains an important cause of morbidity in Laos. Good knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) among the public regarding dengue prevention are required for the success of disease control. Very little is known about dengue KAP among the Lao general population.MethodsThis was a KAP household survey on dengue conducted in a peri-urban Pak-Ngum district of Vientiane capital, Laos. A two-stage cluster sampling method was used to select a sample of participants to represent the general community. Participants from 231 households were surveyed using an interviewer-administered questionnaire.ResultsAlthough 97% of the participants heard of dengue, there was a lack of depth of knowledge on dengue: 33% of them did not know that malaria and dengue were different diseases, 32% incorrectly believed that Aedes mosquito transmits malaria, 36% could not correctly report that Aedes mosquitoes bite most frequently at sunrise and sunset; and < 10% of them recognized that indoor water containers could be Aedes mosquito breeding sites. Attitude levels were moderately good with a high proportion (96%) of participants recognizing that dengue was a severe yet preventable disease. Self reported prevention methods were quite high yet observation of the participants’ yards showed use of prevention methods to be only moderate. The majority (93%) of the interviewees did not believe that they had enough information on dengue. There was an association between good knowledge and better practices, but good knowledge was associated with worse attitudes.ConclusionsThere is a lack of depth of knowledge regarding dengue in Pak-Ngum community and observation methods revealed that more needs to be done by community members themselves to prevent the spread of Aedes mosquitoes.