Reforming Undergraduate Psychiatry Training in Ukraine

Abstract

In Ukraine, mental health problems are common yet the mental health services available are still old fashioned and based on healthcare approaches used in the Soviet Union, providing mainly inpatient services and rudimentary community services. The World Health Organization (WHO) introduced the Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) to reduce the mental health treatment gap all over the world and 2 years later introduced the WHO mhGAP-Intervention Guide (mhGAP-IG), version 2.0 (2016) as not only an educational tool, but also an evidence based guideline to scale up services for mental, neurological and substance use (MNS) conditions with an objective to reduce gap between available health systems capacity and resources for mental health. The main aim of this paper is to describe reforms of undergraduate psychiatry training in Ukraine using Kyiv Medical University as a case example. Kyiv Medical University (KMU) is the first university in Ukraine to introduce the mhGAP-IG in Ukraine. The revised psychiatry curricula in KMU aims to strengthens the evidence based teaching practices, to put emphasis on community orientated mental health care, and to use interactive teaching methods that the university hopes will attract more future doctors to psychiatry and ideally contribute towards the reduction of the mental health treatment-gap in Ukraine.

The Implementation of the WHO Mental Health Gap Intervention Guide (mhGAP-IG) in Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia and Kyrgyz Republic

“…The following modules were selected: dementia, epilepsy, substance use disorders, and child and adolescent mental and behavioral disorders. The introduction of the mhGAP-IG allowed reduction of didactic sessions while maintaining the same number of hours spent on interactive practical sessions and emphasizing self-study of mhGAP-IG online materials [ 38 ]. The resources used in education included videos, role play scenarios, and review of the mhGAP-IG printed version and presentations and handouts created by faculty.…”

Enhancing mental health pre-service training with the WHO mhGAP Intervention Guide: experiences learned and the way forward

“…The revised psychiatry curricula at KMU aims to strengthen the evidence-based teaching practices, to emphasize community-orientated mental health care, and to use interactive teaching methods, such as small group learning activities and clinical tools during placements. There is a hope that these changes at KMU will attract more students to psychiatry, and ultimately will contribute towards the reduction of the mental health treatment gap in Ukraine [ 10 , 11 ].…”