Building and Sustaining Interventions for Children: Task-sharing Mental Health Care in Low-resource Settings

The BASIC study will take place in Kanduyi/Bungoma South Sub-County, in western Kenya, and focuses on children orphaned by one or two parents. Growing evidence demonstrates that orphaned children in low- and middle-income countries are at higher risk of mental health problems, but mental health professionals are largely unavailable in this area. Research suggests that some mental health treatments can be delivered effectively in low- and middle-income countries using a task-shifting approach, in which lay counselors with little or no prior mental health experience are trained to provide treatment, and deliver with supervision. However, very little is known about how to support local systems and organizations in delivering mental health care via task-shifting, particularly in a way that could scale-able and sustainable in the low-resource context. The BASIC team's prior work suggests that partnering with two government sectors, education and health, could be a low-cost and sustainable strategy to implement task-shifted mental health services. By training teachers (via the Education sector) and community health volunteers (via the Health sector) to provide mental health care, a larger population could potentially be reached. Before attempting any country or system-wide implementation, it is important to know what is needed to enable successful implementation in either or both sectors, client outcomes for those receiving mental health care when delivered via Education or Health, and cost of delivery in both sectors. The team aims to collect outcomes that are relevant to policy makers, and that can be considered along with cost and experiences in both sectors.