Capacity-building of key stakeholder groups to address mental health treatment gaps in low-resource settings

The overall goal of the ESSENCE Capacity Building (CB) component is to strengthen the capacity in the four South Asian countries (India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan) to conduct implementation research in mental health; disseminate the findings to facilitate knowledge exchange; and promote the uptake of research findings to facilitate evidence-based mental health policy making and program planning.

To achieve these objectives, the CB component focus on four target groups: implementation researchers, service user and/or their representatives, media professionals, and policy makers and program managers. The specific goal is to build aligned networks of stakeholders: implementation researchers generating knowledge, service users and media professionals facilitating exchange, and policy makers and program managers utilizing this knowledge in mental health policy and programme design. Across these stakeholder groups, the networks encompass both national and regional geographies. Ultimately, ESSENCE aspires to build a wider collaborative network of all these stakeholders, regionally led and coordinated by ESSENCE network partner institutions, sustainably contributing to translating science into effective implementation of services to reduce the mental disorders treatment gap in South Asia.

The rationale:

Despite abundant knowledge about mental disorders and cost-effective treatments, treatment gaps persist globally, especially in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Alongside the treatment gap is the quality gap, where effective treatments aren’t consistently provided in routine care settings. Implementation research addresses this by studying how evidence-based treatments function in real-world settings, considering the audience, context, and implementation factors. Successful implementation research emphasizes collaboration and active involvement of stakeholders, including consumers, media professionals, and policymakers, to translate knowledge into practice for better mental health outcomes. Collaboration is crucial for impactful research, as highlighted by the National Institute of Mental Health. CB component aligns with these principles, aiming to address the needs of researchers, service users, and practitioners while fostering collaboration among these groups. ESSENCE will not only deliver specific research outputs but also build capacity for knowledge generation, exchange, and uptake, fostering strong collaborations to bridge the gap between science and service delivery in mental health care.

Progress till date:

Completion of Implementation Science fellowships (with one peer-reviewed publication by an India Implementation Science fellow), media professional courses and fellowships, service-user representative courses and fellowships, and seminars facilitated by mental health policymakers and experts.

Our next step is to conduct data analysis and manuscript submission and dissemination workshop.

Funders and partners

Funder: National Institute of Mental Health, USA

Partners/Collaborators: Harvard Medical School, USA; NSchizophrenia Research Foundation, Chennai, Tamilnadu, Schizophrenia Awareness Association, Pune, India, HealthNet TPO, Afghanistan, Independent University, Baridhara, Bangladesh, Transcultural Psychosocial Organization (TPO), Kathmandu, Nepal