Global Mental Health Webinar Series: Critical Cultural, and Practical Perspectives
Expanding Youth Access to Mental Health Care: Lessons from a School-Based Study in Haiti
A large mental health treatment gap persists in low-income countries where youth are particularly vulnerable to barriers in accessing mental health care. Therefore, enhancing access to quality mental health care for youth is a priority on the global mental health agenda. This presentation will discuss the benefits and associated challenges of using a school-based platform and a task sharing approach to promote mental health among young people.
We will describe three components of this pilot mental health intervention in Haiti:
- Delivery of mental health training to participating secondary school teachers;
- Assessment of the local burden of post-traumatic stress disorder and major depressive episode among the student participants; and
- Implementation of an intervention phase when teacher-accompagnateurs met with student participants to support them in navigating locally available mental health care.
Study findings support that teachers were enthusiastic learners and that the intervention may be an effective means of reaching students with mental illness who have difficulty accessing care. Teacher participants critiqued the intervention as too narrowly focused on clinical issues and proposed that additional support be integrated to address social adversities that also undermine youth well-being.
Speakers
Père Eddy Eustache
MA and PhD candidate in clinical psychology
Bircharm International University
Père Eddy Eustache, MA and PhD candidate in clinical psychology at Bircharm International University, is the Director of Mental Health and Psychosocial Services and Senior Psychologist at Zanmi Lasante, the Haiti-based sister organization of the NGO, Partners in Health.
Anne E. Becker, MD, PhD
Anne E. Becker, MD, PhD, a psychiatrist and anthropologist, is the Maude and Lilian Presley Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Père Eddy and Dr. Becker were co-principal investigators for a recently completed NIMH-funded youth mental health pilot intervention in Haiti.
Moderator
Mónica Ruiz-Casares
PhD, MSc, MA, LLB
Associate Professor
Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry
McGill University
May 29, 2019
9:00-10:00 am (Montreal EDT)
Attendance: Online platform
Recordings
Recommended readings
Eustache et al. Mental health training for secondary school teachers in Haiti: a mixed methods, prospective, formative research study of feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness in knowledge acquisition. Global Mental Health. 2017 Jan;4.
Eustache et al. High burden of mental illness and low utilization of care among school-going youth in Central Haiti: A window into the youth mental health treatment gap in a low-income country. International Journal of Social Psychiatry. 2017 May;63(3):261-74.
Eustache et al. Formative research on a teacher accompaniment model to promote youth mental health in Haiti: Relevance to mental health task-sharing in low-resource school settings. International Journal of Social Psychiatry. 2017 Jun;63(4):314-24.
