John A Naslund1, Jasmine Kalha2, Juliana L Restivo3, Ishmael Amarreh4, Tamora Callands5, Hongtu Chen6, Carlos Gomez-Restrepo7, Hesham M Hamoda8, Arjun Kapoor2, Sue Levkoff9, Jones Masiye10, Maria A Oquendo11, Vikram Patel12, Inge Petersen13, Ozge Sensoy Bahar14, Laura Shields-Zeeman15, Fred M Ssewamala14, Deepak Tugnawat16, José Miguel Uribe-Restrepo17, Lakshmi Vijayakumar18, Bradley H Wagenaar19, Milton L Wainberg20, Larry Wissow21, Haja Ramatulai Wurie22, Chifundo Zimba23, Soumitra Pathare2. 1. Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. Electronic address: john_naslund@hms.harvard.edu. 2. Centre for Mental Health Law and Policy, Indian Law Society, Pune, India. 3. Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. 4. National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA. 5. Health Promotion and Behavior, College of Public Health, The University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA. 6. Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA. 7. Faculty of Medicine, Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogota, Colombia; Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogota, Colombia. 8. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. 9. College of Social Work, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA. 10. Ministry of Health, Malawi, Lilongwe, Malawi. 11. Department of Psychiatry, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA. 12. Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, USA. 13. Centre for Rural Health, School of Nursing and Public Health, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. 14. Brown School, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA. 15. Trimbos Institute, Netherlands Institute for Mental Health and Addiction, Utrecht, Netherlands. 16. Sangath, Bhopal, India. 17. Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogota, Colombia. 18. Voluntary Health Services, Chennai, India. 19. Department of Global Health, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA. 20. Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY, USA. 21. Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, USA; Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, Seattle Children's Hospital, Seattle, USA. 22. Faculty of Nursing, Biochemistry, College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences, University of Sierra Leone, Freetown, Sierra Leone. 23. University of North Carolina Project Malawi, Lilongwe, Malawi.
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: This study explored perspectives of researchers working with the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Scale-Up Hubs, consisting of research partnerships for scaling up mental health interventions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), to: 1) identify common barriers to conducting impactful research on the implementation of evidence-based mental health services; and 2) provide recommendations to overcome these implementation challenges. METHODS: A sequential qualitative approach was employed. First, an open-ended survey was distributed to the 10 Scale-Up Hubs and NIMH program staff asking informants to identify challenges in conducting mental health implementation research in LMICs. Second, survey findings guided an in-person workshop to generate implementation recommendations to inform the field. RESULTS: In total, 46 respondents completed surveys, and 101 researchers attended the workshop. The workshop produced implementation recommendations for low-resource settings: 1) identifying impact of research on policy and practice; 2) sustaining careers of early researchers in global mental health; 3) engaging policymakers and donors to value mental health research; 4) supporting the workforce for delivering evidence-based treatments for mental disorders; and 5) promoting sustainability of programs. CONCLUSIONS: These findings can strengthen collaboration between researchers and key stakeholders, and highlight important targets for improving mental health implementation research in LMICs.
OBJECTIVE: This study explored perspectives of researchers working with the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Scale-Up Hubs, consisting of research partnerships for scaling up mental health interventions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), to: 1) identify common barriers to conducting impactful research on the implementation of evidence-based mental health services; and 2) provide recommendations to overcome these implementation challenges. METHODS: A sequential qualitative approach was employed. First, an open-ended survey was distributed to the 10 Scale-Up Hubs and NIMH program staff asking informants to identify challenges in conducting mental health implementation research in LMICs. Second, survey findings guided an in-person workshop to generate implementation recommendations to inform the field. RESULTS: In total, 46 respondents completed surveys, and 101 researchers attended the workshop. The workshop produced implementation recommendations for low-resource settings: 1) identifying impact of research on policy and practice; 2) sustaining careers of early researchers in global mental health; 3) engaging policymakers and donors to value mental health research; 4) supporting the workforce for delivering evidence-based treatments for mental disorders; and 5) promoting sustainability of programs. CONCLUSIONS: These findings can strengthen collaboration between researchers and key stakeholders, and highlight important targets for improving mental health implementation research in LMICs.
Authors: Tarun Dua; Corrado Barbui; Nicolas Clark; Alexandra Fleischmann; Vladimir Poznyak; Mark van Ommeren; M Taghi Yasamy; Jose Luis Ayuso-Mateos; Gretchen L Birbeck; Colin Drummond; Melvyn Freeman; Panteleimon Giannakopoulos; Itzhak Levav; Isidore S Obot; Olayinka Omigbodun; Vikram Patel; Michael Phillips; Martin Prince; Afarin Rahimi-Movaghar; Atif Rahman; Josemir W Sander; John B Saunders; Chiara Servili; Thara Rangaswamy; Jürgen Unützer; Peter Ventevogel; Lakshmi Vijayakumar; Graham Thornicroft; Shekhar Saxena Journal: PLoS Med Date: 2011-11-15 Impact factor: 11.069
Authors: Charlotte Hanlon; Nagendra P Luitel; Tasneem Kathree; Vaibhav Murhar; Sanjay Shrivasta; Girmay Medhin; Joshua Ssebunnya; Abebaw Fekadu; Rahul Shidhaye; Inge Petersen; Mark Jordans; Fred Kigozi; Graham Thornicroft; Vikram Patel; Mark Tomlinson; Crick Lund; Erica Breuer; Mary De Silva; Martin Prince Journal: PLoS One Date: 2014-02-18 Impact factor: 3.240