The Gulu Sheffield Mental Health Partnership 2012-2022
November 15, 2022
PONT
November 15, 2022
4th Uganda UK Health Alliance Symposium
2 November 2022
West Uganda Mental Health Service Improvement Project
Project details:
| Lead partners | East London NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK (ELFT); Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych); Tropical Health and Education Trust (THET); Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda (MU) |
| Additional partners | The Jamie Devaney Memorial Fund (Jamie’s Fund) (JF); Uganda-UK Health Alliance (UUKHA); Arua Regional Referral Hospital (ARRH); Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST); Butabika National Referral Hospital (BNRH); Peer Nation (PN) |
| Project timeline | July 2021 – March 2022 |
| Project description | The project aimed at strengthening the mental health (MH) care system in Uganda for refugee and host communities in West Nile Province and South-Western Uganda. It utilised a co-created ‘mhGAP Plus’ approach for Skills Building of non-specialist clinical and community staff and local leaders, who received cascaded training from a local faculty trained by the project (Training of Trainers – ToT), resulting in over 350 frontlining professionals trained. The training included the WHO’s mhGAP intervention, with additional contextually appropriate training material and supervision.
Additionally, the project piloted a Peer Support Worker (PSW) approach for community level mental health care in the two main centres within the project zone (Arua and Mbarara). This involved the training of service users to undertake group and one-on-one therapeutic recovery sessions for community members, assisting the formal healthcare workers to reach unmet need in the community. The project aimed to build sustainability through the development of an online training and peer-supervision platform, as an ongoing repository of training resources, self-directed training, and peer/supervisor engagement. |
