Tele-Mentoring and Monitoring of the National Mental Health Program: A Bird’s-Eye View of Initiatives from India
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30953/tmt.v6.262Keywords:
Capacity building, Tele-psychiatry, Tele-mentoring and monitoring, Primary care psychiatryAbstract
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.
Downloads
References
Dasgupta A, Deb S. Telemedicine: a new horizon in public health in India. Indian J Community Med 2008 Jan; 33(1): 3–8. doi: 10.4103/0970-0218.39234
Board of Governors, In supersession of the Medical Council of India. Telemedicine practice guidelines. GOI; 2020. Available from: http://egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2020/219374.pdf [cited 8 August 2020].
Math SB, Manjunatha N, Kumar CN, Basavarajappa C, Gangadhar BN. Telepsychiatry operational guidelines – 2020. Bengaluru: NIMHANS; 2020.
Ibrahim FA, Pahuja E, Dinakaran D, Manjunatha N, Kumar CN, Math SB. The future of telepsychiatry in India. Indian J Psychol Med 2020 Oct 1; 42(5_suppl): 112S–17S. doi: 10.1177/0253717620959255
Gururaj G, Varghese M, Benegal V, Rao GN, Pathak K, Singh LK, et al. National mental health survey of India, 2015–16. National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, NIMHANS; 2016. Available from: http://indianmhs.nimhans.ac.in/Docs/Report2.pdf [cited 29 August 2020].
Garg K, Kumar CN, Chandra PS. Number of psychiatrists in India: baby steps forward, but a long way to go. Indian J Psychiatry 2019; 61(1): 104–5.
Gupta R, Narang RL. Psychiatric training and its practice: a survey of 86 practitioners. Indian J Psychiatry 1987 Oct; 29(4): 349–52.
Badrakalimuthu VR, Rangaswamy SV. Mental health practice in private primary care in rural India: a survey of practitioners. World Psychiatry 2009 Jun; 8(2): 124–5. doi: 10.1002/j.2051-5545.2009.tb00229.x
Avasthi A, Varma SC, Kulhara P, Nehra R, Grover S, Sharma S. Diagnosis of common mental disorders by using PRIME-MD Patient Health Questionnaire. Indian J Med Res 2008 Feb; 127(2): 159–64.
Identification of psychiatric disorders by rural grass-root health workers: case series & implications for the National Mental Health Program of India | SpringerLink. Available from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11126-020-09807-5 [cited 23 December 2020].
Manjunatha N, Singh G. Manochaitanya: integrating mental health into primary health care. Lancet 2016 Feb 13; 387(10019): 647–8. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(16)00286-5
Manjunatha N, Singh G, Chaturvedi SK. Manochaitanya programme for better utilization of primary health centres. Indian J Med Res 2017 Feb; 145(2): 163–5.
Manjunatha N, Kumar C, Math S, Thirthalli J. Designing and implementing an innovative digitally driven primary care psychiatry program in India. Indian J Psychiatry 2018; 60(2): 236. doi: 10.4103/psychiatry.IndianJPsychiatry_214_18
Malathesh BC, Ramchandraih S, Basavarappa C, Manjunatha N. The Future of community psychiatry: The role of Telemedicine. In: Moirangthem S, Damodaran D, Manjunatha N, Kumar CN, Math SB, editors. Commuity Psychiatry During Pandemic. 2nd ed. Bengaluru: NIMHANS Publication 182; 2020, pp. 175–85.
NIMHANS Indians – YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/c/NIMHANSINDIANS [cited 25 December 2020].
Arora S, Kalishman S, Thornton K, Komaromy M, Katzman J, Struminger B, et al. Project ECHO (Project Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes): a national and global model for continuing professional development. J Contin Educ Health Prof 2016 Jul; 36: S48. doi: 10.1097/CEH.0000000000000097
Kulkarni K, Adarsha AM, Parthasarathy R, Philip M, Shashidhara HN, Vinay B, et al. Concurrent validity and interrater reliability of the ‘clinical schedules for primary care psychiatry’. J Neurosci Rural Pract 2019 Jul; 10(3): 483–8. doi: 10.1055/s-0039-1697878
Manjunatha N, Kumar CN, Math SB, Thirthalli J, Parthasarathy R, Bhaskarapillai B. Karnataka telepsychiatric mentoring and monitoring (KTM) project. National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, NIMHANS; 2019. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/project/Karnataka-Telepsychiatric-Mentoring-and-Monitoring-KTM-Project [cited 4 October 2020].
Math SB, Manjunatha N, Kumar CN, Dinakaran D, Gowda GS, Rao GN, et al. Mental Healthcare Management System (e-MANAS) to implement India’s mental healthcare act, 2017: Methodological design, components, and its implications. Asian J Psychiatr. 2021;57: 102391. doi: 10.1016/j.ajp.2020.102391. Epub 2020 Aug 27. PMID: 33187888.
Sagi MR, Aurobind G, Chand P, Ashfak A, Karthick C, Kubenthiran N, et al. Innovative telementoring for addiction management for remote primary care physicians: a feasibility study. Indian J Psychiatr 2018 Oct 1; 60(4): 461.
Pahuja E, Kumar TS, Uzzafar F, Manjunatha N, Kumar CN, Gupta R, et al. An impact of a digitally driven primary care psychiatry program on the integration of psychiatric care in the general practice of primary care doctors. Indian J Psychiatr. 2020 Nov 1; 62(6): 690.
Kumar CN, Chand PK, Manjunatha N, Math SB, Shashidhara HN, Basavaraju V, et al. Impact evaluation of VKN–NIMHANS–ECHO model of capacity building for mental health and addiction: methodology of two randomized controlled trials. Indian J Psychol Med 2020 Dec 7; 42(6): 0253717620969066. doi: 10.1177/0253717620969066
Malathesh BC, Ibrahim FA, Nirisha PL, Kumar CN, Chand PK, Manjunatha N, et al. Embracing technology for capacity building in mental health: new path, newer challenges. Psychiatr Q [Internet]. 2020; 1–8. doi: 10.1007/s11126-020-09859-7
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Gopi Gajera, Barikar C. Malathesh, Lakshmi Nirisha P., Channaveerachari Naveen Kumar, Narayana Manjunatha, Suchandra H.H., Sujai Ramachandraiah, Chethan Basavarajappa, Rajendra Gowda K.M., Suresh Bada Math
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors retain copyright of their work, with first publication rights granted to Telehealth and Medicine Today (THMT).
THMT is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
