Competency-based training and supervision: development of the WHO-UNICEF Ensuring Quality in Psychosocial and Mental Health Care (EQUIP) initiative.

Globally, there has not been a standardised approach to ensure that the growing number of people who are not licensed clinicians but are delivering psychological interventions and mental health services have the competencies to deliver those interventions and services safely. Therefore, WHO and UNICEF developed Ensuring Quality in Psychosocial and Mental Health Care (EQUIP). EQUIP is a free resource with a digital platform that can be used to guide competency assessment.

An Application of Evidence-Based Approaches to Engage Young People in the Design of a Global Mental Health Databank.

Introduction: Engaging youth in mental health research and intervention design has the potential to improve their relevance and effectiveness. Frameworks like Roger Hart's ladder of participation, Shier's pathways to participation and Lundy's voice and influence model aim to balance power between youth and adults. Hart's Ladder, specifically, is underutilized in global mental health research, presenting new opportunities to examine power dynamics across various contexts.

Effects of sexual assault vs. other traumatic experiences on emotional and cannabis use outcomes in regular cannabis users with trauma histories: moderation by gender?

Introduction: While sexual assault may have particularly adverse emotional effects compared with other forms of trauma, it remains unclear which emotional outcome dimensions are impacted, whether cannabis outcomes are similarly impacted, and whether gender differences exist in sexual assault's links with these outcomes.

Methods:  = 100 cannabis users with trauma histories ( age = 33.1) completed standardized measures of demographics, trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress (PTS) and depressive symptoms, hopelessness, and cannabis outcomes (frequency, medicinal prescription, motives, and craving).

Perspectives on competency-based feedback for training non-specialists to deliver psychological interventions: multi-site qualitative study of the EQUIP competency-based approach.

Background: The use of feedback to address gaps and reinforce skills is a key component of successful competency-based mental health and psychosocial support intervention training approaches. Competency-based feedback during training and supervision for personnel delivering psychological interventions is vital for safe and effective care.

Aims: For non-specialists trained in low-resource settings, there is a lack of standardised feedback systems.

Combining mHealth Technology and Pharmacotherapy to Improve Mental Health Outcomes and Reduce Human Rights Abuses in West Africa: Intervention Field Trial.

Background: In West Africa, healers greatly outnumber trained mental health professionals. People with serious mental illness (SMI) are often seen by healers in "prayer camps" where they may also experience human rights abuses. We developed "M&M," an 8-week-long dual-pronged intervention involving (1) a smartphone-delivered toolkit designed to expose healers to brief psychosocial interventions and encourage them to preserve human rights (M-Healer app), and (2) a visiting nurse who provides medications to their patients (Mobile Nurse).

Training community health volunteers to use mobile platform during the COVID-19 pandemic: The Kenya experience.

This study describes an alternative to face-to-face training method for community health volunteers (CHVs) as used by a collaborative group from the University of Nairobi, University of Washington and the Nairobi Metropolitan Mental Health Team during the COVID-19 lockdown in Kenya. This qualitative study describes the experiences of 17 CHVs enrolled in a training study, required to utilize different digital platforms (Google Meet or Jitsi) as a training forum for the first time. Verbatim extracts of the participants' daily experiences are extracted from a series of write-ups in the group WhatsApp just before the training.

Impact of war on HIV-related healthcare services and health workers in eastern Ukraine: a qualitative study.

The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused serious challenges for healthcare workers (HCWs) and HIV-related healthcare services. This study assessed the effects of the invasion on HCWs wellbeing and on continuity of HIV services, using in-depth interviews with HCWs from facilities offering HIV antiretroviral therapy (ART) and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) services in the Donetsk region of Eastern Ukraine. A directed content analysis, with both inductive and deductive approaches, was conducted.

Cumulative exposure to depressive symptoms and all-cause mortality among adults with HIV in Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda.

Objective: We estimated the effects of cumulative exposure to depressive symptoms on risk of all-cause mortality among people with HIV (PWH) in four African countries.

Design: An analysis of prospective cohort data.

Methods: The African Cohort Study (AFRICOS) is a prospective cohort of people receiving care at twelve clinics in Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda.

"A labor of love": Integrating mental health and HIV care: Lessons from a multicountry mental health learning network.

Mental health conditions among people living with HIV (PLWH) are important to address as they adversely affect quality of life, impede adherence to HIV treatment and increase mortality. Planning for integrating mental health care in resource-limited HIV care settings requires substantial effort. Learning networks are a useful way to exchange knowledge between countries about best and current practices in planning mental health care for PLWH.

Making cities mental health friendly for adolescents and young adults.

Urban life shapes the mental health of city dwellers, and although cities provide access to health, education and economic gain, urban environments are often detrimental to mental health. Increasing urbanization over the next three decades will be accompanied by a growing population of children and adolescents living in cities. Shaping the aspects of urban life that influence youth mental health could have an enormous impact on adolescent well-being and adult trajectories.

Department of the Air Force Family Advocacy Program: Exploring the Impact of an Antiviolence Intervention Program for Women.

This mixed-methods study explores the impact of the Vista curriculum, a trauma-informed antiviolence intervention program for women who have used force in their intimate relationships, delivered by the Department of the Air Force Family Advocacy Program clinicians. Questions sought to understand any changes in personal growth, self-awareness, beliefs, and relationship interaction skills for 62 cisgender women. Findings suggest that women gained personal growth, self-awareness, and increased relationship tools.

Co-developed implementation guidelines to maximize acceptability, feasibility, and usability of mobile phone supervision in Kenya.

Opportunities exist to leverage mobile phones to replace or supplement in-person supervision of lay counselors. However, contextual variables, such as network connectivity and provider preferences, must be considered. Using an iterative and mixed methods approach, we co-developed implementation guidelines to support the implementation of mobile phone supervision with lay counselors and supervisors delivering a culturally adapted trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy in Western Kenya.

Expanding mental health services in low- and middle-income countries: A task-shifting framework for delivery of comprehensive, collaborative, and community-based care.

This paper proposes a framework for comprehensive, collaborative, and community-based care (C4) for accessible mental health services in low-resource settings. Because mental health conditions have many causes, this framework includes social, public health, wellness and clinical services. It accommodates integration of stand-alone mental health programs with health and non-health community-based services.

Higher rates of mental health screening of adolescents recorded after provider training using simulated patients in a Kenyan HIV clinic: results of a pilot study.

Background: Kenyan adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) experience a dual burden of HIV and common mental disorders (CMD). HIV clinics are a key entry point for AGYW in need of integrated CMD and HIV care; however, rates of screening and referral for CMDs are low. Our objective was to test an evidence-based provider training strategy, simulated patient encounters (SPEs), on CMD service delivery for AGYW in a Kenyan HIV clinic.

Medicaid Coverage of Guidelines-Based Asthma Care Across 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, 2021-2022.

Introduction: Asthma affects more than 25 million Americans, including 4.2 million children. The burden of asthma disproportionately affects people enrolled in Medicaid, among other disparate groups.

Evidencing the Impact of Web-Based Coproduction With Youth on Mental Health Research: Qualitative Findings From the MindKind Study.

Background: Public involvement in research is a growing phenomenon as well as a condition of research funding, and it is often referred to as coproduction. Coproduction involves stakeholder contributions at every stage of research, but different processes exist. However, the impact of coproduction on research is not well understood.

Global Mental Health: Where We Are and Where We Are Going.

Purpose Of Review: To summarize recent findings in global mental health along several domains including socioeconomic determinants, inequities, funding, and inclusion in global mental health research and practice.

Recent Findings: Mental illness continues to disproportionately impact vulnerable populations and treatment coverage continues to be low globally. Advances in integrating mental health care and adopting task-shifting are accompanied by implementation challenges.

COVID-19, the COVID-19 response, and racial injustice: Associations with depressive and anxiety symptoms among US adults from April 2020 to March 2021.

Background: People in the United States have faced numerous large and intersecting threats to their mental health since the onset of the coronavirus disease pandemic. This study aimed to understand the unique relationships between these co-occurring threats - including the police killings of unarmed Black people and the fight for racial justice - and how they affect mental health symptoms among various demographic groups.

Methods: Data on population mental health, state-level COVID-19 incidence rates, cases of police-involved killings, and occurrences of racial justice protests were analyzed.

Young people's data governance preferences for their mental health data: MindKind Study findings from India, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.

Mobile devices offer a scalable opportunity to collect longitudinal data that facilitate advances in mental health treatment to address the burden of mental health conditions in young people. Sharing these data with the research community is critical to gaining maximal value from rich data of this nature. However, the highly personal nature of the data necessitates understanding the conditions under which young people are willing to share them.

Mobile Mental Health in Women's Community-Based Organizations: Protocol for a Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: Of every 10 women in rural India, 1 suffers from a common mental disorder such as depression, and untreated depression is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Several factors lead to a large treatment gap, specifically for women in rural India, including stigma, lack of provider mental health workforce, and travel times. There is an urgent need to improve the rates of detection and treatment of depression among women in rural India without overburdening the scarce mental health resources.

Understanding Lay Counselor Perspectives on Mobile Phone Supervision in Kenya: Qualitative Study.

Background: Task shifting is an effective model for increasing access to mental health treatment via lay counselors with less specialized training that deliver care under supervision. Mobile phones may present a low-technology opportunity to replace or decrease reliance on in-person supervision in task shifting, but important technical and contextual limitations must be examined and considered.

Objective: Guided by human-centered design methods, we aimed to understand how mobile phones are currently used when supervising lay counselors, determine the acceptability and feasibility of mobile phone supervision, and generate solutions to improve mobile phone supervision.

Sustainable Partnerships to Ensure Quality in Psychological Support (EQUIP) for Adolescents.

Ensuring that sustainable and effective mental health services are available for children and adolescents is a growing priority for national governments. However, little guidance exists on how to support service implementation. In Kenya, partnerships were formed among regional government, nongovernmental organizations, and universities to implement Ensuring Quality in Psychological Support (EQUIP)-Nairobi, a pilot project to train and supervise nonspecialists delivering psychological support to adolescents.