Abstract
BackgroundIt is well established that the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region urgently needs to scale up mental health services and that a major barrier is a leadership gap including both mental health specialists who lack public health/planning skills and public health system leaders who are not trained in issues relevant to mental health. To address the need for capacity-building in mental health leadership in the MENA region, a 10-day course was developed and delivered to 43 participants from fourteen countries. Both quantitative surveys and qualitative follow-up interviews were conducted with the course participants.ResultsA positive impact was found on participants’ knowledge, motivation, and implementation. Participants reported the greatest changes in their ability to integrate mental health into primary care, along with changes in ability to plan, take leadership, advocate for change, and establish networks between and within countries and felt better able to use research to advocate for mental health services and training.ConclusionThe course is an effective tool for developing leadership skills in the region and demonstrated that participants used the knowledge gained to implement change in their settings.
Highlights
It is well established that the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region urgently needs to scale up mental health services and that a major barrier is a leadership gap including both mental health specialists who lack public health/planning skills and public health system leaders who are not trained in issues relevant to mental health
In order to achieve this scale-up of services, barriers that made previous efforts falter must be addressed [6]. One such barrier is a lack of the leadership skills necessary to sustain national program development. This leadership gap includes both mental health specialists who lack public health/planning skills, and public health system leaders who are not trained in issues relevant to mental health
Research statement The aim of this paper is to examine the experiences of the professionals who attended this course on their leadership roles and skills, and if so, what type of impact it had; an evaluation was conducted
Summary
It is well established that the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region urgently needs to scale up mental health services and that a major barrier is a leadership gap including both mental health specialists who lack public health/planning skills and public health system leaders who are not trained in issues relevant to mental health. A wealth of evidence has emerged, including a further Lancet series [2], a PLoS Medicine series [3], and a range of resources through the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) [4]. In order to achieve this scale-up of services, barriers that made previous efforts falter must be addressed [6] One such barrier is a lack of the leadership skills necessary to sustain national program development. In recognition of these weaknesses, the Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office of the WHO included in its Regional Strategy an emphasis on adding a public health approach to the training of mental health
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