Continuing education to go: capacity building in psychotherapies for front-line mental health workers in underserviced communities.

Objective: To address the gaps between need and access, and between treatment guidelines and their implementation for mental illness, through capacity building of front-line health workers.

Methods: Following a learning needs assessment, work-based continuing education courses in evidence-supported psychotherapies were developed for front-line workers in underserviced community settings. The 5-hour courses on the fundamentals of cognitive-behavioural therapy, interpersonal psychotherapy, motivational interviewing, and dialectical behaviour therapy each included videotaped captioned simulations, interactive lesson plans, and clinical practice behaviour reminders.