Tele-Mentoring and Monitoring of the National Mental Health Program: A Bird’s-Eye View of Initiatives from India

Abstract

Objective: To provide a glimpse of various digital programs and modules that are being implemented across the country by the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, India (an institution of national importance under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India; one of its mandates is to develop innovative strategies to improve mental health capacity building as part of the National Mental Health Program, a publicly funded health program to cater to the public health need posed by psychiatric disorders). Design: The information is presented in a narrative fashion by organizing the activities into three categories of digital training methods: webinar mode, blended mode and hybrid mode. Results: Cadres ranging from lay-counsellors (volunteers in the community), non-specialist health workers to professionals including medical officers are covered with these initiatives. During the period from August 2016 till December 2020, more than 16 million man hours of training is delivered for more than 35,000 participants from across the country. Conclusions: These have a tremendous potential to exponentially increase skilled human resources capable of providing quality care to hitherto unserved remote areas of the rural hinterland and ultimately reduce the burgeoning treatment gap. In-depth outcome assessments are the need of the hour.

Impact of Technology Driven Mental Health Task-shifting for Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs): Results from a Randomised Controlled Trial of Two Methods of Training

“…SG-ASHAs not only identified more number of potential cases but showed meaningful improvement in KAP Scores. A corollary finding is a feasibility of utilising digital technology to engage grassroot health workers for mental health, notwithstanding the challenges (Gajera et al, 2021a). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the longitudinal impact of mental health training in India.…”

“…A couple of such initiatives may be noteworthy wherein the remotest healthcare professionals are reached out in innovative ways. (Bairy et al, 2021;Gajera et al, 2021b;Gowda et al, 2018;Ibrahim et al, 2021;Sukumar et al, 2020).…”

A camp approach of community psychiatry in India

“…Support from the specialist (by way of audio or video calling) can however be made available easily. [ 31 32 33 ] These kinds of collaborative efforts have been shown to be both feasible and effective. Collaborative care is one way to move forward as advocated by Lake and Turner, 2017.…”

“…A silver lining though is the advent of simple digital technology, which can be harnessed easily to train and mentor PCDs and other health-care workers such as Tele-OCT.[ 18 ] In the past 5 years, several initiatives have shown the success of these capacity-building initiatives. [ 31 35 ] These digitally driven capacity-building initiatives can be taken up by specialists working in mental health institutes and departments of psychiatry across the country. Each institute/Department can adopt a given geographical area to cater to the training needs.…”

National Tele-Mental Health Program in India: A step towards mental health care for all?

“…This can also be used for capacity building and training of non-specialist health workers in identifying mental health problems and initiating initial treatment or specialist consultation through tele-mentoring and tele-monitoring initiatives. [ 11 ]…”