In the light of our ongoing work in well-being and resilience with children in Zambia, we were very pleased that our allies, SuperBetter – alerted us to this piece of work that may be of interest to you. The abstract is set out below:
Abstract
Abstract
Mental health disorders are prevalent among youth and adolescents in low- and middle-income countries, and access to evidence-based treatments is poor. Although there is a great need for high-quality research to serve young people in low- and middle-income countries, there is limited guidance available for researchers who wish to conduct such work. Here, we describe our process of conducting school-based youth mental health work in Kenya over the last several years. We focus on five key lessons we learned that could guide future global mental health work with youth:
(a) reducing stigma with strengths-focused interventions
(b) expanding access by working in schools
(c) generating buy-in from local stakeholders
(d) adapting the intervention via multicultural collaboration, and
(e) applying insights from low- and middle-income countries to serve young people in high-income countries.
We conclude by discussing how these lessons, and those shared by other teams, can be applied to help reduce the treatment gap for young people around the world.