SOWK 425 Week 6 PowerPoint Presentation Example

PowerPoint Presentation: Closing the Global Mental Health Gap Through Task-Sharing, the Friendship Bench and the Social Worker's Role

Slide 1: Closing the Global Mental Health Gap

• Nearly a billion people live with a mental disorder
• Most never receive care
• Task-sharing and what social workers bring

Speaker notes: Today I want to look at the global mental health gap, the distance between the number of people who need mental health care and the number who receive it. I will describe the scale of the problem, explain an approach called task-sharing, look closely at one program in Zimbabwe and consider what social workers can contribute.

Slide 2: A Global Burden

• About 970 million people in 2019
• Roughly one in eight people worldwide
• Depression and anxiety most common

Speaker notes: According to the World Health Organization (2022), close to a billion people were living with a mental disorder in 2019, about one in every eight people on earth. Anxiety and depressive disorders were the most common. These conditions affect every country, but resources to treat them are distributed very unevenly.

Slide 3: The Treatment Gap

• Most people with psychosis receive no care
• The gap is widest in low-income countries
• Stigma and cost keep people away

Speaker notes: The same report found that around 71 percent of people with psychosis worldwide receive no mental health services, and the proportion receiving care is far lower in low-income countries than in wealthy ones (World Health Organization, 2022). Even where services exist, stigma, cost and distance keep many people from seeking help.

Slide 4: Why Specialists Cannot Close It Alone

• Few psychiatrists and psychologists in poor countries
• Small share of health budgets for mental health
• Training more specialists takes decades

Speaker notes: In many low-income countries there are only a handful of psychiatrists for millions of people, and mental health receives a very small share of government health spending (World Health Organization, 2022). Training enough specialists would take generations. A different approach is needed to reach people now.

Slide 5: Task-Sharing

• Nonspecialists trained to deliver care
• Specialists supervise and handle complex cases
• Endorsed by the Lancet Commission

Speaker notes: Task-sharing means training nonspecialists, such as community health workers, nurses or lay counselors, to deliver some forms of mental health care under supervision. A commission convened by The Lancet to link mental health with sustainable development, reporting through Patel et al. (2018), recommended scaling up task-sharing as a central strategy and called for mental health to be treated as part of sustainable development.

Slide 6: Tools for Nonspecialists

• WHO intervention guide for nonspecialized settings
• Clear steps for assessment and management
• Used in more than one hundred countries

Speaker notes: The World Health Organization (2016) developed the mhGAP Intervention Guide to help nonspecialist health workers assess and manage conditions such as depression, psychosis and substance use. Its step-by-step format makes it possible for primary care workers to provide care that once required a specialist.

Slide 7: The Friendship Bench

• Began in Harare, Zimbabwe
• Lay health workers, often older women
• Wooden benches at primary care clinics

Speaker notes: One of the best-known examples is the Friendship Bench in Zimbabwe. Lay health workers, mostly older women respected in their neighborhoods and known locally as grandmothers, meet clients on wooden benches set outside local health clinics and talk with them about the problems weighing on them.

Slide 8: How It Works

• Screening for common mental disorders
• Six sessions of structured problem-solving therapy
• Optional peer support group afterward

Speaker notes: Clients who screen positive for common mental disorders are offered six weekly sessions of problem-solving therapy. The worker helps the client identify a problem, choose a practical step and review progress. Afterward, clients may join a peer support group that combines conversation with income-generating activities such as crocheting bags from recycled plastic.

Slide 9: What the Trial Found

• 573 participants in Harare
• Fewer symptoms than enhanced usual care at six months
• Lower depressive symptoms as well

Speaker notes: In a randomized controlled trial of 573 adults, Chibanda et al. (2016) found that by six months, people assigned to the Friendship Bench reported clearly lower scores on a screening measure for common mental disorders than people given enhanced usual care, along with lower depressive symptoms. The trial showed that well-trained and supervised lay workers can deliver effective psychological help.

Slide 10: Social Work Roles

• Recruit, train and supervise lay counselors
• Link clients to housing, income and medical care
• Protect workers from burnout

Speaker notes: Social workers are well suited to task-sharing programs. They can recruit and train lay counselors, provide supervision, connect clients to resources that address the problems discussed on the bench and support counselors who carry heavy emotional loads. Healy and Link (2012) describe a global profession that works across health, development and community practice, and task-sharing sits at that intersection.

Slide 11: Stigma and Advocacy

• Community education reduces stigma
• Advocacy for mental health in national budgets
• Including people with lived experience

Speaker notes: Social workers can also work at the community and policy levels, leading education that reduces stigma, advocating for mental health funding in national budgets and making sure people with lived experience of mental illness help design services. Without those changes, even effective programs remain small.

Slide 12: A Biblical Perspective

• Galatians 6:2: carry one another's burdens
• Healing within community
• Every person worthy of care

Speaker notes: In Galatians 6:2, Paul urges believers to shoulder one another's heavy loads, and he says that doing so completes what Christ's law asks of them (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016). The Friendship Bench puts that instruction into practice: ordinary members of a community, trained and supported, sit with neighbors and help them carry what they cannot carry alone. It reminds us that care need not depend on a specialist's title to be real.

Slide 13: Summary and References

• The gap is vast, but task-sharing can narrow it
• World Health Organization (2016, 2022); Patel et al. (2018)
• Chibanda et al. (2016); Healy and Link (2012); English Standard Version Bible (2001/2016)

Speaker notes: The global mental health gap is enormous, but programs like the Friendship Bench show that communities can close part of it when lay workers are trained and supported. Social workers can help make that happen. Thank you for watching.

References

Chibanda, D., Weiss, H. A., Verhey, R., Simms, V., Munjoma, R., Rusakaniko, S., Chingono, A., Munetsi, E., Bere, T., Manda, E., Abas, M., & Araya, R. (2016). Effect of a primary care-based psychological intervention on symptoms of common mental disorders in Zimbabwe: A randomized clinical trial. JAMA, 316(24), 2618-2626. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2016.19102

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Healy, L. M., & Link, R. J. (Eds.). (2012). Handbook of international social work: Human rights, development, and the global profession. Oxford University Press.

Patel, V., Saxena, S., Lund, C., Thornicroft, G., Baingana, F., Bolton, P., Chisholm, D., Collins, P. Y., Cooper, J. L., Eaton, J., Herrman, H., Herzallah, M. M., Huang, Y., Jordans, M. J. D., Kleinman, A., Medina-Mora, M. E., Morgan, E., Niaz, U., Omigbodun, O., . . . Unützer, J. (2018). The Lancet Commission on global mental health and sustainable development. The Lancet, 392(10157), 1553-1598. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31612-X

World Health Organization. (2016). mhGAP intervention guide for mental, neurological and substance use disorders in non-specialized health settings: Mental health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) (Version 2.0). World Health Organization.

World Health Organization. (2022). World mental health report: Transforming mental health for all. World Health Organization.