#communitycare
#communitymentalhealth
#globalinnovations2014
If ever there was a need for innovation in mental health, it is now. Perhaps that is why we see growing global commitment to develop, evaluate, and scale up promotion, prevention and treatment innovations for mental disorders around the world. Under that premise, the idea of #communitycare in mental health is also gaining momentum. After centuries of the institutionalization of those who suffer from mental health problems, #communitycare in mental health is a refreshing change in the right direction, based on the notion that mental health problems can be dealt with at the community level. In fact, in many ways, the work that iFred does, with projects such as Schools for Hope and Fields for Hope, are also based on the fundamental belief of #communitycare in mental health.
A few months ago, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine with support from the Grand Challenge Canada, the Mental Health Innovation Network was created comprising of a global community of mental health innovators: researchers, practitioners, policy-makers, service user advocates. The central aim of this network is to share innovative resources and ideas to promote mental health and improve the lives of people with mental, neurological and substance use disorders. Fundamentally, the network promotes the idea of #communitycare interventions by enabling learning, building partnerships, synthesizing and disseminating knowledge and crucially, by leveraging resources. There are other major initiatives as well like Grand Challenges in Global Mental Health, the World Innovation Summit on Health 2013 (WISH) and the Movement for Global Mental Health which champion the idea of the #communitycare model of intervention.
In February this year, an article appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, called Transforming Lives, Enhancing Communities – Innovations in Global Mental Health, which highlights not only the need for innovation in global mental health at the community level, but the potential that exists for #collaborativecare and #communitymentalhealth. The article highlights that “despite the robust evidence testifying to the effectiveness of a range of pharmacologic, psychological, and social interventions that can transform lives and enhance communities, the majority of the world’s population has no access to these interventions.” Further, the authors, Vikram Patel and Shekhar Saxena, show that the human rights abuses faced by those who suffer from mental health problems are the worst of modern times. Yet the resource allocation for global mental health remains staggeringly low.
They point to new and innovative measures to tackle the global mental health crisis, in which community care is at the heart of all interventions. In fact, through the Mental Health Innovation Network, these up and coming innovative interventions which can be scaled-up, are being chronicled and discussed and made available for public access. Among some of these innovative interventions, we see the appearance of prevention programs targeted toward youth such as iFred’s Schools for Hope program.
According to the authors of a report drafted (upon which the article is based) in the wake of the World Innovation Summit on Health, on mental health, “at the heart of these innovations lies the health care delivery model of integrated collaborative care. Collaborative care must incorporate an active role for patients and their families and must integrate mental health care with social and economic interventions.”
The authors go on to argue that such care models must focus on the detection and treatment of mental disorders as early in the course of life as possible, since most mental disorders begin before adulthood. They say that “mental health care should be delivered in diverse settings; indeed, most care would be expected to occur outside traditional specialist delivery venues — for instance, in schools, primary health care facilities, the workplace, and patients’ homes.” This is why the focus on #communitymentalhealth is so vital, and also a wonderful example of the importance of iFred’s work in implementing innovative measures to tackle what is a truly global crisis.
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