Lola Kola: developing mHealth for mental health in west Africa

Abstract

Lola Kola's passion is global mental health research that harnesses the potential “of psychological interventions for improving outcomes for patients when delivered by trained lay health-care workers” and “the use of technology to support the delivery of such interventions”, she says. Based in Ibadan, Nigeria, Kola is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Ibadan's WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Mental Health, Neurosciences and Drug and Alcohol Abuse in the Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, and Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Psychology at the Lead City University. Kola is also affiliated with the Behavioral Research in Technology and Engineering (BRiTE) Center at the University of Washington (UW), Seattle, WA, USA, and the University of Ibadan's Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health in the College of Medicine. With colleagues at the BRiTE Center, and supported by an NIH Global Emerging Leader grant, Kola has led the design and development of a mobile phone app for the self-management of perinatal depression in adolescent mothers as an adjunct intervention to WHO's Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) within routine antenatal and perinatal services in primary care. This population has “a greater risk of depression and anxiety than their adult counterparts, which in turn predisposes them to serious physical health complications”, she says. These “young mothers did not like going for treatment in primary care because of self-stigma and social stigma”, Kola explains, and “the app brings care closer to them”. The app uses short, age-appropriate animated videos to deliver mental health and wellbeing messages, including encouraging treatment attendance. Kola and her colleagues have recently completed the field trial of the app and she is now working with a colleague in Kenya to explore funding for use of the app in other African countries, starting with Kenya.