In a new article published this week that forms part of the PLoS Medicine series on Global Mental Health Practice, Shoba Raja and colleagues report their case study of implementing the "BasicNeeds" model of mental health and development in Nepal, which emphasizes user empowerment, community development, strengthening of health systems, and policy influencing.
The authors say their model works in partnership with governments to provide the "great push" that is required to set up services where mental health and development have not yet been a priority. The authors report their preliminary results and lessons learned from the first 8 months of implementation.
Funding: DFID, UK, provided funding for implementing the Mental Health and Development Model in Nepal. Vikram Patel is supported by a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship in Clinical Science. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interests: SR, US, SM, and SKW are employed by BasicNeeds, a mental health and development organization. CU founded BasicNeeds. At the BasicNeeds Nepal programme, their partners in Nepal (LEADS) contacted a Nepalese pharma company—Asian Pharmaceutical Company—for assistance in providing medicines to the Users who access services in the programme's operational districts of Baglung and Myagdi in the Western region. As a result, the company agreed to provide free medicines for up to 200 users attending the MH camps organised by LEADS at the district hospitals. They have so far supplied twice. Discussions are currently going on for their continued help and for them to supply directly to the two district hospitals in future. This provision of medicines is done without any formal contractual arrangement with LEADS (or BasicNeeds) and there is no direct financial association between our organizations and Asian Pharmaceutical Company. In a nutshell, the sum total of the association is the provision of free medicines for 200 patients (and possibly more in the future). PS is employed by LEADS, a non-profit organisation which provides medical treatment and other support services to individuals with mental illness. VP is a guest editor of the Global Mental Health Practice Series and was involved in the selection of commissions, including this particular paper, but he was not involved in the peer review or editorial decision making about this article.
Citation: Raja S, Underhill C, Shrestha P, Sunder U, Mannarath S, et al. (2012) Integrating Mental Health and Development: A Case Study of the BasicNeeds Model in Nepal. PLoS Med 9(7): e1001261. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001261
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PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: http://www.plos.org/media/press/2012/plme-09-07-raja.pdf
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