Duke Global Health Institute hosts first global conference on mental health, discussing community-based approach to care

Duke’s newly formed Center for Global Mental Health held its inaugural meeting Tuesday, bringing together a diverse group of academics, clinicians and community leaders to discuss pressing issues in the field.

The conference, entitled Building a Global Mental Health Community: Research, Policy and Practice Across Disciplines, featured panel discussions, research symposia and a panel discussion with experts from the disciplines different.

“This is an area of ​​global health that has been overlooked and understudied for a long time,” said Chris Beyrer, the Gary Hock Distinguished Professor of Global Health and director of the Global Health Institute. “… The time is now to bring mental health to the forefront of our global health agenda and in our efforts to ensure health equity.”

A community-based approach to care

The focus of the group discussion was the importance of developing community models of mental health care.

Kathryn Whetten, a professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy and director of the Center for Health Policy and Inequality Research, shared her work training teachers and public health workers in Kenya to provide with sensitive care. Whetten found that once trained, these community members were able to provide the necessary mental health interventions with high “fidelity.”

He also emphasized the importance of researchers to know who the “informal leaders” of the community are in changing successful care practices, noting that such information can be used in the US community.

Luke Smith, a psychiatrist and executive director of El Futuro, a nonprofit community organization dedicated to improving mental health care for the Latino community, emphasized the importance of providers staying connected to the community they serve. He recalled his family’s worries that he would lose his roots as he attended the “respectable” institutions of Duke and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Building on this theme, Irene Felsman, clinical assistant professor in the School of Nursing, and Thakur Mishra, director of the refugee health program at the World Church, highlighted the effectiveness of storytelling as a treatment owner for refugees. They explained that cultural stigma and language barriers often prevent refugees from benefiting from traditional western mental health practices because they rely on a foreign language. As a result, refugees face difficulties in finding interpreters.

“They can’t use translators, either [the interpreters are] it’s not available, or they don’t understand mental health counselors,” Felsman said.

While discussing the role of community power in providing effective mental health care, David Eagle, research assistant professor of global health, discussed his research on and how political polarization affects the mental health of clergy members.

His analysis found that “political disagreements and conflicts can lead to increased work pressure, which in turn affects mental health.” Eagle stressed the need to recognize political polarization as an indicator of social health, and added that understanding political conditions at work is “important, as they show broad social trends that can affect health of minds in different occupations and situations.”

A new research effort

Although the Duke Center for Global Mental Health was established earlier this year, it does not mark the beginning of global mental health work at Duke. Instead, it is a “renewed effort” to explore the intersections between research, policy and practice and embrace creative collaborations within the field of mental health.

Eve Puffer, Pamela and Jack Egan assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience and director of the center, noted that the center now has “over 50 scientific teams,” a number of still growing.

“We want to focus not only on academic research, but also on the practice and policy aspects,” Puffer said. “… Duke is unique in the world of mental health because most of the world’s mental health is done in medical schools or schools of public health, and we have the opportunity to do it in this place we have. [the] The Trinity [College of Arts & Sciences]we have a Medical School and people building bridges all the time.”

Maeve Salm, the center’s clinical research coordinator, emphasized the importance of “connecting researchers and policy makers” to ensure that tangible changes are produced by research.

“Usually, research is published in academic journals, which is wonderful, but at that time [it] and it is rarely implemented or in the hands of people who really need it,” he said.

Much of the agency’s work to date has focused on investing in mental health research in low- and middle-income countries, which are often disproportionately affected by factors such as economic instability, inadequate health care resources and climate change.

Salm shared that the agency has an ongoing grant aimed at increasing mental health research in partner areas in four East African countries, including Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.

“We’ve already started working on that to support leading researchers doing mental health research around the world in those countries [to] cooperate because often the way funding is organized is usually high-income countries to low-income countries in terms of access to finance,” he said. “We want to support [them] they are smart but let it be their opinion. ”

Although the center is still in its early stages, Salm noted that there are already many projects planned for the coming months, including research on climate change and biodiversity. mental health, collaborations with the Mental Health Innovation Network Asia Hub and recently the new “Bass Connections. a project with a special call to support the Middle East… [through] emotional support for Palestinian children.”

In addition to promoting collaboration across disciplines and communities, the center also aims to connect students from undergraduate to postdoctoral positions with scientific advisors.

“Mental health has become a hot topic around the world…so we need more people to be trained in different ways of mental health. [and] treatments,” said Salm. “… That can look like advice on research methods, and it can look like what people call ‘capacity building’ – like the shared, collective generation of knowledge about treatment methods. [and] what works well.”

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