Collaborative activities

1. ‘District Mental Health Programme (DMHP)’ Training for Residents and Post-Doctoral fellow (PDF) at Ramanagaram district

The Post-Doctoral Fellow in Community Mental Health along with two Psychiatry Junior Residents are posted each month to the District Mental Health Programme (DMHP), Ramanagaram for a period of one week and fifteen days respectively.

This includes introduction to DMHP, community activities including mobile outreach clinics, primary healthcare centre (PHC) visits, school mental health programme, information-education-communication (IEC) activities at various centres including workplace-based awareness programmes for prison staff, fire fighters, schoolteachers etc., training of trainers (TOT) for ASHA workers, aanganwadi workers and research activities in the community including Validation of Clinical Schedules for Primary Care Psychiatry, Assisted Home Care etc.

2. Collaboration with various States

Currently team has been actively involving in providing successful community models for the implementation of NMHP after piloting such as camp model, Tele-psychiatric “On-Consultation Training” Program are few of them. The team successfully finished training for DMHP Karnataka, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. Currently the training of states of Bihar and Chhattisgarh is ongoing.

3. Collaboration with Non-Governmental Organization

In a recent development, community Interventional programmes at Thirthalli and Turuvekere are partnered with some of the “Non-Governmental Organizations” as below.

a) Chitta Sanjeevini Charitable Trust, an NGO supported by the Infosys Foundation

http://www.chittasanjeevini.org/banner/ngos-partnering

b) Lions Club International in Thirthahalli and Turuvekere to provide psychiatric medications, which are not available through the government sources. With this, we have been able to provide medications that not only treat the illness, but also improve their productivity and quality of life.

c) Samadhana Aptha Salaha Kendra, Bengaluru run by Rajanna Achar Sarojamma trust

d) Nemmadi Kendra run by Rajanna Achar Sarojamma trust

4.Lay Counsellors Training

Telemedicine Centre and the Community Psychiatry Unit, NIMHANS in association with Aapta Salaha Kendra, an NGO in Bangalore city train lay-counsellors who are members of the civil society interested in providing psychological first aid to the distressed individuals. This initiative began in early 2018 and has now been formalized into a ‘certificate course in lay-counselling’ program. This course consists of 36hrs of online face-to-face training and 16hrs of onsite observation. The latter incorporates visits to psychiatry outpatient clinics to observe and learn clinical interactions between patients and experts. It is a blended learning approach including both synchronous and asynchronous modules consisting of observational learning, self-paced learning and discussion with roleplay. In the asynchronous mode, counsellors (spoke) go through e-learning assignments allotted to them via the phone-based applications, which would be evaluated, and a feedback will be given at a later point. Synchronous mode involves didactic lectures, case presentations (by counsellors) and discussion with NIMHANS team (spoke) for a duration of 2hrs.