Dear colleagues
Global mental health has pioneered the implementation of brief, mechanistically informed, psychosocial interventions by non-specialist providers, from community health workers and lay counsellors to nurses and peer support workers. The pandemic is a historic opportunity to put this rich evidence base into practice and fix the broken mental health care systems of all countries. This comment I wrote in the Lancet a couple of weeks ago (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02736-7/fulltext) summarises this evidence and my own ongoing efforts (in India and the US at this point, a unique experiment in two countries with extremely different levels of mental health resources) to scale up.
Vikram
Vikram Patel
The Pershing Square Professor of Global Health and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow
Department of Global Health and Social Medicine
Harvard Medical School
Professor, Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health
Co-Founder and Member of Managing Committee, Sangath
Mental Health for All Lab: https://mentalhealthforalllab.hms.harvard.edu/
GlobalMentalHealth@Harvard: https://globalhealth.harvard.edu/domains/global-mental-health-harvard/
EMPOWER: www.empower.care
Newsletter sign up: Global Mental Health @ Harvard Newsletter
Sangath: www.sangath.in
Lancet Citizens Commission on Reimagining India's Health System: https://www.citizenshealth.in/
HIFA profile: Vikram Patel is a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School (USA) and Sangath (India). He has a special interest in public health aspects of mental health in developing countries. He is the author of 'Where There Is No Psychiatrist: A mental health care manual'. Vikram_patel AT hms.harvard.edu
