Access Of Mental Health Services - 1497 Words

Access to mental health services is distributed unevenly across countries, with low and middle-income countries (LMICs) lacking proportionate access to human resources and treatments. Developed countries only carry a small portion of the global mental health burden, and yet they are most equipped to treat patients. In need of a more sustainable method of providing mental health services within the confines of cost and time, LMICs have begun to explore the option of task-sharing, in which mental health care is conjointly or selectively provided by a trained community member with preexisting or nonexistent experience in health-related functions. If treatments and interventions conducted by non-specialists are comparably effective to those†¦show more content†¦Of those who consented, 224 participated throughout the duration of the study. Control groups were located in separate villages, where no interventions or group gatherings were conducted. A two-week long training for grou p interpersonal psychotherapy was administered to a local villager in each village with no previous experience, who then led community interventions. This type of therapy is a short-term treatment in which problems resulting from depressive symptoms that affect interpersonal relationships are identified and addressed. Interventions were in a same-sex group setting, with five–eight participants. 90-minute sessions were conducted once a week, for a total of 16 weeks. Two-weeks and six-months after the final psychotherapy session, the number of depressive symptoms and severity of functional impairment in patients decreased from pre-intervention assessment scores. All differences in scores from baseline to two-week or six-month follow-up were significant. Differences between two-week and six-month scores were either non-existent or negligible, demonstrating the long-lasting impact of this intervention. While this study used methods of participant recruitment and assignment that are inapplicable to a method used in widespread task-sharing implementation, it was completed in way that