Global Mental Health Capacity and Capability Building Program
Despite the fact that Low and Middle Income Counties (LMICs) make 90% of the world’s population, only 10% of the world’s health research has addressed this area in LMICs. A key challenge in many LMICs is the limited capacity for such research particularly, research directly relevant to the most critical mental health challenges in these settings such as maternal depression, self-harm and suicide, child and adolescent mental health, older adult mental health etc. In order to overcome these challenges it is fundamental for LMICs to not only increase their research funding but also build research capacity. In order to help build research capacity Global Mental Health and Cultural Psychiatry Group (GMHCP) has been organizing annual global mental health capacity and capability building training program in UAE (Sharjah) since 2015.
This includes training health professionals in research methods both quantitative and qualitative, research ethics, research governance, safeguarding, systematic reviews, academic writing. Training in assessment instruments (such as ADOS, CAARMS, SPIA, PANSS, memory assessments) and psychosocial interventions (CBT, ACT, CST, Five models of CBT). These capacity building programs also serve to increase collaboration and partnerships (SDG-17) among research teams coming from across the globe. Making mental health research attractive particularly to early career researchers.
