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The ‘PRemIum for aDolEscents’ (PRIDE) project has developed a school-based, transdiagnostic stepped care programme for common adolescent mental health problems in India. The programme comprises a brief problem-solving intervention (‘Step 1’) followed by a personalised cognitive-behavioural intervention (‘Step 2’) for participants who do not respond to the first step.
Methods
A mixed-method design was used to evaluate the acceptability and feasibility of the stepped care programme in five schools in New Delhi. Participants were N = 80 adolescents (mean age = 15.3 years, females = 55%) with elevated mental symptoms and associated distress/impairment.
Results
61 (76%) of the enrolled sample were assessed following Step 1, from which 33 (54%) met non-remission criteria. Among these 33 non-remitted cases, 12 (36%) opted for Step 2 and five (42%) completed the full programme. The remaining non-remitted cases (n = 21, 64%) opted out of further treatment. Perceived resolution of the primary problem (n = 9, 43%) was the most common reason for opting out. The median time to complete each step was 22 and 70 days respectively, with a gap of 31 days between steps. Qualitative feedback from adolescents and counsellors indicated requirements for a shorter delivery schedule, greater continuity across steps and more collaborative decision-making.
Conclusions
This study provides preliminary evidence for a stepped care programme aimed at common adolescent mental health problems. Modifications are recommended to enhance the acceptability and feasibility of the programme in low-resource settings.
Kelvin–Helmholtz (KH) instability plays a significant role in transport and mixing in various media such as hydrodynamic fluids, plasmas, geophysical flows and astrophysical situations. In this paper, we numerically explore this instability for a two-dimensional strongly coupled dusty plasma medium with rotational shear flows. We study this medium using a generalized hydrodynamic fluid model which treats it as a viscoelastic fluid. We consider the specific cases of rotating vorticity with abrupt radial profiles of rotation. In particular, single-circulation and multi-circulation vorticity shell profiles have been chosen. We observe the KH vortices at each circular interface between two relative rotating flows along with a pair of ingoing and outgoing wavefronts of transverse shear waves. Our studies show that due to the interplay between KH vortices and shear waves in the strongly coupled medium, the mixing and transport behaviour are much better than those of standard inviscid hydrodynamic fluids. In the interest of substantiating the mixing and transport behaviour, the generalized hydrodynamic fluid model is extended to include Lagrangian tracer particles. The numerical dispersion of these tracer particles in a flow provides an estimate of the diffusion in such a medium. We present the preliminary observations of tracer distribution (cluster formation) and diffusion (mean square displacement) across the medium.
The passage of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD or the Convention) has been hailed as the culmination of a “paradigm shift” from the biomedical model of disability to the social and human rights-oriented model. The CRPD’s assertion of equal recognition before the law applying to all persons with disability, including mental health and psychosocial disability, and thus amounting to universal legal capacity, in Article 12 and in the subsequent General Comment, Number 1 on Article 12 issued by the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD Committee), has been the subject of considerable debate. While many have argued that this is a long overdue protection and a manifestation of nondiscrimination and freedom from coercion on the basis of disability, some have raised concerns based on perceived impracticality or risk. Among the obligations of States parties to the Convention is the mandate to shift from coercion, in the form of substitute decision-making models, to supported decision-making regimes, relying on a “will and preference” standard rather than a “best interests” standard. Even while debate around the exact nature and scope of Article 12 and General Comment 1 continues, efforts to end coercion in mental health and to promote supported decision-making have been gaining momentum in laws, policies, and practices around the world.
Since adoption of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the interpretive General Comment 1, the topic of legal capacity in mental health settings has generated considerable debate in disciplines ranging from law and psychiatry to public health and public policy. With over 180 countries having ratified the Convention, the shifts required in law and clinical practice need to be informed by interdisciplinary and contextually relevant research as well as the views of stakeholders. With an equal emphasis on the Global North and Global South, this volume offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary analysis of legal capacity in the realm of mental health. Integrating rigorous academic research with perspectives from people with psychosocial disabilities and their caregivers, the authors provide a holistic overview of pertinent issues and suggest avenues for reform.
Predicting and preventing relapse presents a crucial opportunity and first step to improve outcomes and reduce the care gap for persons living with schizophrenia. Using commercially available smartphones and smartwatches, technology now affords opportunities to capture real-time and longitudinal profiles of patients’ symptoms, cognition, physiology and social patterns. This novel data makes it possible to explore relationships between behaviours, physiology and symptoms, which may yield personalised relapse signals.
Aims
Smartphone Health Assessment for Relapse Prevention (SHARP), an international mental health research study supported by the Wellcome Trust, will inform the development of a scalable and sharable digital health solution to monitor personal risk of relapse. The resulting technology will be studied toward predicting and preventing relapse among individuals diagnosed with serious mental illness.
Method
SHARP is a two-phase study with research sites in Boston, Massachusetts, and Bangalore and Bhopal, India. During phase 1, focus groups will be conducted at each study site to collect feedback on the design and features available on mindLAMP, a digital health platform. Individuals with serious mental illness will use mindLAMP for the duration of a year during phase 2.
Results
The results of the research outlined in this protocol will guide the development of technology and digital tools to help address pervasive challenges in global mental health.
Conclusions
The digital tools developed as a result of this study, and participants’ experiences using them, may offer insight into opportunities to expand digital mental health resources and optimize their utilisation around the world.
Despite significant advancements in healthcare technology, digital health solutions – especially those for serious mental illnesses – continue to fall short of their potential across both clinical practice and efficacy. The utility and impact of medicine, including digital medicine, hinges on relationships, trust, and engagement, particularly in the field of mental health. This paper details results from Phase 1 of a two-part study that seeks to engage people with schizophrenia, their family members, and clinicians in co-designing a digital mental health platform for use across different cultures and contexts in the United States and India.
Methods
Each site interviewed a mix of clinicians, patients, and their family members in focus groups (n = 20) of two to six participants. Open-ended questions and discussions inquired about their own smartphone use and, after a demonstration of the mindLAMP platform, specific feedback on the app's utility, design, and functionality.
Results
Our results based on thematic analysis indicate three common themes: increased use and interest in technology during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), concerns over how data are used and shared, and a desire for concurrent human interaction to support app engagement.
Conclusion
People with schizophrenia, their family members, and clinicians are open to integrating technology into treatment to better understand their condition and help inform treatment. However, app engagement is dependent on technology that is complementary – not substitutive – of therapeutic care from a clinician.
There is a global drive to improve access to mental healthcare by scaling up integrated mental health into primary healthcare (PHC) systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
Aims
To investigate systems-level implications of efforts to scale-up integrated mental healthcare into PHC in districts in six LMICs.
Method
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 121 managers and service providers. Transcribed interviews were analysed using framework analysis guided by the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research and World Health Organization basic building blocks.
Results
Ensuring that interventions are synergistic with existing health system features and strengthening of the healthcare system building blocks to support integrated chronic care and task-sharing were identified as aiding integration efforts. The latter includes (a) strengthening governance to include technical support for integration efforts as well as multisectoral collaborations; (b) ring-fencing mental health budgets at district level; (c) a critical mass of mental health specialists to support task-sharing; (d) including key mental health indicators in the health information system; (e) psychotropic medication included on free essential drug lists and (f) enabling collaborative and community- oriented PHC-service delivery platforms and continuous quality improvement to aid service delivery challenges in implementation.
Conclusions
Scaling up integrated mental healthcare in PHC in LMICs is more complex than training general healthcare providers. Leveraging existing health system processes that are synergistic with chronic care services and strengthening healthcare system building blocks to provide a more enabling context for integration are important.
Low-intensity psychosocial interventions have been effective in targeting perinatal depression, but relevant mechanisms of change remain unknown.
Aims
To examine three theoretically informed mediators of the Thinking Healthy Programme Peer-delivered (THPP), an evidence-based psychosocial intervention for perinatal depression, on symptom severity in two parallel, randomised controlled trials in Goa, India and Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
Method
Participants included pregnant women aged ≥18 years with moderate to severe depression, as defined by a Patient Health Questionnaire 9 (PHQ-9) score ≥10, and were randomised to either THPP or enhanced usual care. We examine whether three prespecified variables (patient activation, social support and mother–child attachment) at 3 months post-childbirth mediated the effects of THPP interventions of perinatal depressive symptom severity (PHQ-9) at the primary end-point of 6 months post-childbirth. We first examined individual mediation within each trial (n = 280 in India and n = 570 in Pakistan), followed by a pooled analysis across both trials (N = 850).
Results
In both site-specific and pooled analyses, patient activation and support at 3 months independently mediated the intervention effects on depressive symptom severity at 6 months, accounting for 23.6 and 18.2% of the total effect of THPP, respectively. The intervention had no effect on mother–child attachment scores, thus there was no evidence that this factor mediated the intervention effect.
Conclusions
The effects of the psychosocial intervention on depression outcomes in mothers were mediated by the same two factors in both contexts, suggesting that such interventions seeking to alleviate perinatal depression should target both social support and patient activation levels.
Item 9 of the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) queries about thoughts of death and self-harm, but not suicidality. Although it is sometimes used to assess suicide risk, most positive responses are not associated with suicidality. The PHQ-8, which omits Item 9, is thus increasingly used in research. We assessed equivalency of total score correlations and the diagnostic accuracy to detect major depression of the PHQ-8 and PHQ-9.
Methods
We conducted an individual patient data meta-analysis. We fit bivariate random-effects models to assess diagnostic accuracy.
Results
16 742 participants (2097 major depression cases) from 54 studies were included. The correlation between PHQ-8 and PHQ-9 scores was 0.996 (95% confidence interval 0.996 to 0.996). The standard cutoff score of 10 for the PHQ-9 maximized sensitivity + specificity for the PHQ-8 among studies that used a semi-structured diagnostic interview reference standard (N = 27). At cutoff 10, the PHQ-8 was less sensitive by 0.02 (−0.06 to 0.00) and more specific by 0.01 (0.00 to 0.01) among those studies (N = 27), with similar results for studies that used other types of interviews (N = 27). For all 54 primary studies combined, across all cutoffs, the PHQ-8 was less sensitive than the PHQ-9 by 0.00 to 0.05 (0.03 at cutoff 10), and specificity was within 0.01 for all cutoffs (0.00 to 0.01).
Conclusions
PHQ-8 and PHQ-9 total scores were similar. Sensitivity may be minimally reduced with the PHQ-8, but specificity is similar.
Evidence shows benefits of psychological treatments in low-resource countries, yet few government health systems include psychological services.
Aim
Evaluating the clinical value of adding psychological treatments, delivered by community-based counsellors, to primary care-based mental health services for depression and alcohol use disorder (AUD), as recommended by the Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP).
Method
Two randomised controlled trials, separately for depression and AUD, were carried out. Participants were randomly allocated (1:1) to mental healthcare delivered by mhGAP-trained primary care workers (psychoeducation and psychotropic medicines when indicated), or the same services plus individual psychological treatments (Healthy Activity Program for depression and Counselling for Alcohol Problems). Primary outcomes were symptom severity, measured using the Patient Health Questionnaire – 9 item (PHQ-9) for depression and the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test for AUD, and functional impairment, measured using the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule (WHODAS), at 12 months post-enrolment.
Results
Participants with depression in the intervention arm (n = 60) had greater reduction in PHQ-9 and WHODAS scores compared with participants in the control (n = 60) (PHQ-9: M = −5.90, 95% CI −7.55 to −4.25, β = −3.68, 95% CI −5.68 to −1.67, P < 0.001, Cohen's d = 0.66; WHODAS: M = −12.21, 95% CI −19.58 to −4.84, β = −10.74, 95% CI −19.96 to −1.53, P= 0.022, Cohen's d = 0.42). For the AUD trial, no significant effect was found when comparing control (n = 80) and intervention participants (n = 82).
Conclusion
Adding a psychological treatment delivered by community-based counsellors increases treatment effects for depression compared with only mhGAP-based services by primary health workers 12 months post-treatment.