Project Title: Using peer support in developing empowering mental health service
Project Description: "People with lived experience of mental illness ( i.e personal experience of mental ill-health and recovery represent valuable resource who can support their own recovery and the recovery of others through positive self-disclosure, promoting hope, empowerment, self-efficacy and expanding social networks 1-4. Peer support provides mechanisms for people with lived experience of mental illness to engage with those whose need for treatment is high but who are often alienated from the traditional health service system5.... "People with lived experience of mental illness ( i.e personal experience of mental ill-health and recovery represent valuable resource who can support their own recovery and the recovery of others through positive self-disclosure, promoting hope, empowerment, self-efficacy and expanding social networks 1-4. Peer support provides mechanisms for people with lived experience of mental illness to engage with those whose need for treatment is high but who are often alienated from the traditional health service system5. A peer support worker is someone with lived experience of mental health problems and recovery, who is employed to support other people living with mental health problems. Peer support is an evidence based well established intervention to improve the lives of people with severe mental illness in many high income countries. The major aim of UPSIDES is to replicate and scale up peer support interventions for people with severe mental illness, generating evidence of sustainable best practise in high, middle and low resource settings. Scale up will be achieved via sequential objectives: 1. To establish an international community of practice for peer support at from high, middle and low resource settings By forming a consortium of mental health researcher, providers and users at nine study sites in seven countries in Europe, Africa and Asia. 2. To conduct a situational analysis of existing peer support initiatives in the participating countries To understand the current stage of development of peer support and identify organizational and cultural consideration of these peer support worker role which may impact development 3. To scale up peer support models with a focus on vulnerable populations where pilot initiatives already exist. By manualising existing intervention and building capacity in co-production and co-delivery of demonstration 4. To contextualize and adapt peer support models for those sites where there are no peer support initiatives. By adapting existing tools, materials and strategies from demonstration centre to ensure cultural and situation appropriateness or creating new ones as needed. 5. To rigorously evaluate inputs, process and outcomes of implementation including an assessment of process and contextual factors following a theory of change approach using mixed methods To understand effect of peer support on (a) user level clinical and psychosocial outcomes; (b) service level outcome s such as coverage and service user satisfaction, (c) system level outcome such as cost effectiveness and return on investment, added by qualitative methods (focus groups, stakeholder interviews) at each level to identify active ingredients and key barrier and facilitators for research and practice. 6. To distil from case studies evidence of best practice for dissemination to local, national and international stakeholders in order to maximize sustainability and spread By engaging diverse national and local advisory boards including service users, carers, senior clinical staff members, representative of health Ministries, hospital directors, community leaders and a communication taskforce. Some of the activities IHI would do include • Research in Dar es Salaam in Muhimbili NationaL Hospital • Identification of 86 people with different mental illness to participate in the study • Conduct formative assessment of the study • The data collection will involve qualitative research (FGDs) with the key stakeholders and quantitative cross sectional survey "
Principal Investigator : Donat Shamba
Department Name : HSIEP
Time frame: (2018-01-01) - (2023-09-30)
European Union (EU) Horizon 2020 (Normal)
External Collaborating Partners
None added yet.