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Consultancy Capacity building for mental health services Facilitation of change
within complex healthcare systems
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Capacity building for mental health services
Mental health services are now being developed in low income countries where people have used traditional healers for hundreds of years. How communities care for the mentally ill stems from, and is embedded within, specific belief systems and language. Integrating different approaches to healing within any development of mental health services can be a challenge to policy makers, government departments and Western trained staff.
Consultancy services would facilitate the planning of integrated services. Workshops for staff would develop expertise in working across and within different cultural and language paradigms. Creative, locally relevant syntheses of traditional and Western approaches could therefore be generated.
For a review of some of the major issues in the integration of traditional and Western approaches in mental health see: (opens PDF file in new window)
Gilbert, J. (2006) Cultural imperialism revisited: Counselling and Globalisation International Journal of Critical Psychology, Special Issue: Critical Psychology in Africa, 17, 10-28.
Gilbert, J. (1999) Responding to mental distress: Cultural imperialism or the struggle for synthesis? Development in Practice 9(3), 287-295.
DFID Mental Health Issues Paper
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