Contribution of the FAST (fight against stigma) program to better training of primary health care providers in mental health

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Prevalence of mental disorders is high worldwide. In Low-and-Lower-Middle-income countries (LALMICs) mental illnesses are already the second cause of burden in DALYs. As psychiatrists are extremely rare in LALMICs, addressing this issue calls for shifting mental health to primary care and consequently, training first line health care providers would be the next challenge. Via the FAST program, the World Asssociation of Social Psychiatry (WASP), Sanofi, Ministries of Health, academics, patients/families association and NGOs have joined forces to improve access to mental health care in LALMICs. The program is based on 3 pillars (1) Mental health literacy, (2) health care professionals (HCP) training and (3) affordable quality medicines. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to develop a training curriculum and a set of materials to train HCP that is easily adaptable to the singularity of the local environment.METHODOLOGY: (1) A master-2 public health student conducted the project; (2) two domains were selected in priority schizophrenia and unipolar mood disorders; (3) two main targets were identified general practitioners and nurses / community healthcare workers; (4) professional's needs were assessed through a phone questionnaire; (5) WASP experts were in charge of drafting slides kits and other technical documents (6) to avoid any risk of conflict of interest, it was decided that training on medications will be based on the WHO mhGAP guide.RESULTS: For each disease and each category of HCP (1) a training of trainers manual; (2) a training curriculum; (3) a slide kit; (4) a training brochure; (5) videos of patients; (6) role-play scenarios; (7) clinical cases (8) pre and post assessment questionnaires, were made available.CONCLUSION: First feed-back indicated that these tools were of great added value for countries with limited human resources, even though, as anticipated, they will have to be adapted locally, especially role-play scenarios, clinical cases and patient's videos.