Non-specialist health worker interventions for the care of mental, neurological and substance-abuse disorders in low- and middle-income countries

Strengthening mental health care systems for Syrian refugees in Europe and the Middle East: integrating scalable psychological interventions in eight countries

“…For example, tasks may be shifted to a supervised lay person who is specifically trained to perform a limited task only. Through shifting tasks, interventions that are originally carried out in specialized services may be carried out in primary or community care instead (van Ginneken et al, 2013). In both high-resource European countries and Syrian neighbouring countries with fewer health care resources, task-shifting is a promising strategy to implement within current stepped care or collaborative care approaches to public health (de Jong, 2011; Thornicroft & Tansella, 2013).…”

“…Studies evaluating task-shifting interventions in mental health care have been carried out in LMICs, and show positive results in terms of reducing disability and improving overall and social functioning (Singla et al, 2017; van Ginneken et al, 2013). An RCT in India (Patel et al, 2010) showed that a collaborative care intervention led by lay counsellors was cost-saving to the health system (Buttorff et al, 2012).…”

The Systematic Development and Pilot Randomized Evaluation of Counselling for Alcohol Problems, a Lay Counselor‐Delivered Psychological Treatment for Harmful Drinking in Primary Care in India: The PREMIUM Study

“…Community health workers have demonstrated effectiveness in increasing access to care (Swider, 2002; Viswanathan et al., 2010), for example, promoting immunization uptake and breastfeeding, improving tuberculosis treatment outcomes, and reducing child morbidity and mortality (Lewin et al., 2010). In the field of mental health, there is robust evidence that lay counselors (a person without professional qualification in mental health care) can be trained to deliver PT effectively for people with depressive and anxiety disorders in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMIC) (van Ginneken et al., 2013). There is also evidence demonstrating that PT developed in Western cultural contexts retain their effectiveness in different cultural contexts, when adapted following a systematic methodology (Chowdhary et al., 2013).…”

Knowledge and training in paediatric medical traumatic stress and trauma-informed care among emergency medical professionals in low- and middle-income countries

“…For this approach to be successful consideration would have to be given to the online format, for instance ensuring access would be feasible in areas with limited or variable bandwidth (such as content that can be downloaded on to all device types and saved when sufficient bandwidth is available). This format would meet the requirements identified in the literature for the development of interventions that are feasible in the LMIC context, as trauma-informed care can be incorporated into existing care models utilizing existing human resources (Kassam-Adams, 2014; Patel et al, 2007, 2011; van Ginneken et al, 2013). Examples of existing training programmes that could be implemented in LMICs include Psychological First Aid based programmes and guides (World Health Organization War Trauma Foundation and World Vision International, 2011).…”

“…In LMICs this includes medical and nursing professionals who provide emergency medical care (for simplicity henceforth emergency care nurses and physicians will be referred to as emergency staff ). Given limited resources in some LMIC areas, this has been identified as one method for improving access to evidence-based treatments in LMICs (Patel, Chowdhary, Rahman, & Verdeli, 2011; van Ginneken et al, 2013). Such integration of mental health interventions into emergency care has been highlighted as a cost-effective and feasible method of delivering mental health prevention (Kassam-Adams, 2014; Patel et al, 2007).…”