Mental health care training for practitioners in remote and rural areas

Abstract

This article shares how the needs within a national pre-hospital mental health care programme were identified, and demonstrates how consensus over the content of a national course was achieved through the use of a modified Delphi approach. The Clinical Skills Managed Educational Network (CSMEN), Self-Harm Mitigation Training (STORM®) and BASICS, alongside RRHEAL, contributed to this development. Using blended learning techniques the resulting course encourages a contextual approach to user needs, specifically teaching generic mental health care skills to staff who are often working single-handed, and are required to respond appropriately, locally and safely as they work towards achieving National Mental Health crisis standards.

Using the Delphi expert consensus method in mental health research

“…Improve professional practice Standards of practice for the adult mental health workforce (Goodyear et al, 2015) Improve professional training Content of mental health-care training for practitioners in remote and rural areas (De Mello et al, 2013) Improve mental health systems Core set of performance indicators for public mental health care (Lauriks et al, 2014) Develop content of an intervention Content of a basic mental health first aid course for adolescents to help their peers (Ross et al, 2012) Improve medication use Antipsychotic dosing (Gardner et al, 2010) Improve caregiving Caregiving towards a person with bipolar disorder (Berk et al, 2011) Improve public action on prevention or early intervention Parenting strategies for reducing the risk of adolescent depression and anxiety disorders (Yap et al, 2014) Improve cultural competence Culturally appropriate mental health first aid to an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander adolescent (Chalmers et al, 2014) Develop policy How tertiary education institutions can support students with a mental illness (Reavley et al, 2013) Develop a health economic model Cost-effectiveness of 3 antidepressants in major depressive disorder in the UK (Lenox-Smith et al, 2009) Define a concept Definition of relapse in schizophrenia (San et al, 2015) Develop a scale Item content for a geriatric depression inventory appropriate to Chinese culture (Xie et al, 2015) Improve classification or diagnosis Clinical subtypes of core premenstrual disorders (Ismail et al, 2013) Determine epidemiology (prevalence, risk factors)…”

“…Improve professional practice Standards of practice for the adult mental health workforce (Goodyear et al, 2015) Improve professional training Content of mental health-care training for practitioners in remote and rural areas (De Mello et al, 2013) Improve mental health systems Core set of performance indicators for public mental health care (Lauriks et al, 2014) Develop content of an intervention Content of a basic mental health first aid course for adolescents to help their peers Improve medication use Antipsychotic dosing (Gardner et al, 2010) Improve caregiving Caregiving towards a person with bipolar disorder (Berk et al, 2011) Improve public action on prevention or early intervention…”

Adapting the depression component of WHO Mental Health Gap Intervention Guide (mhGAP-IG.v2) for primary care in Shenzhen, China: a DELPHI study

“…The panel need not be very large [ 60 ] nor need to establish statistical power [ 61 ] but key conditions must be met, including diversity of expertise; independent and decentralised decision making; and aggregation of results by an objective research facilitator [ 62 ]. Delphi has been widely used by the mental health sector and often when other sources of evidence is unavailable [ 63 ]; for example, to define standards of practice for a mental health workforce [ 64 ] or to assist with the content development of mental health training programs [ 65 , 66 ]. This research applied the Delphi approach to establish a primary care panel to participate in two rounds of a web-based, self-completion survey (in Mandarin Chinese).…”