Santa Monica, CA, April 12, 2006
- International Medical Corps will be participating in a conference aimed at addressing a critical gap in health care in Africa: mental health. Dr. Lynne Jones, IMC's technical adviser on mental health, and IMC psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Asare, will be presenting on their work in Sierra Leone. Also from IMC, psychiatrist Dr. Mustafa Elmasari, who is based in Chad, will discuss IMC's work initiating mental health services for Sudanese refugees there. Both programs go far beyond the psychosocial work typically done by international agencies.
To be held at the Africa Union Hall on April 24th and 25th in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, participants will come from all over Africa, and beyond, and will be presenting their latest research and sharing their own experiences of delivering mental health care. A meeting of this kind is an extraordinary opportunity to place attention on an important part of comprehensive health care in Africa, where mental health care often goes unaddressed.
Worldwide, some 450 million people suffer from a mental or behavioral disorder, yet only a small percentage have access to even the most basic treatment. Traditionally, the humanitarian relief community has not prioritized direct mental health services in emergencies as a significant part of their activities, despite the widely recognized need. In fact, people recover faster from disasters when their mental health needs are being met, making it crucial that they be addressed early after a crisis or disaster.
IMC, an international humanitarian agency, has been implementing psychosocial programs since 1993 and in 2003 began training primary health care providers to integrate mental health into their work, enabling them to identify mental health problems, refer to specialists, and treat and manage mental health needs - something few NGOs are doing at this time. In addition IMC sets up a variety of psychosocial support programs for the wider community depending on its needs.
IMC began delivering mental health services to Sudanese refugees in Chad in July 2004 with the aim of providing a continuum of care through three components: clinical psychiatric services, primary care mental health services, and community-based outreach. IMC has seen great success from an associated community outreach component, which consists of training local health workers, schoolteachers and traditional healers in self-help initiatives.
"By training local paraprofessionals to recognize and treat mental health disorders, IMC has found a way to work around the human resource shortage that has often been a roadblock to the psychosocial programs offered by NGOs," says Jones who has implemented mental health programs in complex emergencies around the globe. "Even in the resource-poor countries in which IMC typically works, we have successfully trained existing national primary health care staff at the community level."
In response to the consequences of a brutal war in Sierra Leone, IMC launched a pilot community based mental health project in the Kailahun District of Eastern Sierra Leone in 2004. Currently home to approximately 350,000 people, Kailahun had no mental health resources whatsoever when IMC arrived. Even today the country's mental health services are concentrated in the capital, Freetown, which has only one psychiatric hospital, a single psychiatrist and two trained professional nurses. IMC is currently working with the Ministry of Health to find ways to replicate and scale up the successes of its pilot program in Kailahun.
Co-Sponsored by World Psychiatry Association and the African Psychiatric Association & Allied Professions, the theme of the conference is Mental Health in Africa: Time for Action. Focusing on the shape of evidence-based psychiatry in Africa, questions to be addressed include: Which mental health interventions are effective in the African setting? What should African community mental health care look like? How can African mental health professionals develop feasible and effective mental health services? The conference is organized by the Eastern/Southern Africa Psychiatric Association, in collaboration with the Ethiopia Psychiatric Association.
Other presenters include: Sir David Goldberg, Professor Emeritus, Institute of Psychiatry, London; Professor Norman Sartorius, former president of World Psychiatry Association; Professor Rachel Jenkins, Director, World Health Organization collaborating centre, Institute of Psychiatry; and Professor John Cox, Secretary General of World Psychiatry Association.
Established in 1984 by volunteer doctors and nurses, IMC's mission is to improve the quality of life through health interventions and related activities that build local capacity worldwide in difficult environments. By offering training and health care to local populations and medical assistance to people at highest risk, and with the flexibility to respond rapidly to emergency situations, IMC rehabilitates devastated health care systems and helps bring them back to self-reliance.