By Neema Tembele | Project Leader
Upon the successful completion of the mental health intervention program in local communities, TEWWY focused her efforts towards advocacy and cultivating partnerships that will allow for multisectoral integration of mental health Gap Action Program (mhGAP) as we awaited the second portion of the project to be fulfilled. The psychosocial interventions implemented in Local Governement Authorities (LGAs) proved quite successful for the short period of time the services were provided, with great demand from the residents and community leaders alike. More efforts are also put towards fundraising for the support and sustainable implementation of psychosocial interventions in LGAs, to include building the capacity of and working with community workers i.e. Community Health Workers (CHWs) and Community Outreach Workers (COWs) so as to enhance help-seeking efficacy and reduce stigma and discrimination associated with mental health.
Advocacy is an important means of raising awareness on mental health issues and ensuring that mental health is on the national agenda of governments. Advocacy can lead to improvements in policy, legislation and service development. Part of the advocacy TEWWY is conducting is performing research on current mental health policy and learning how proposed policy changes will affect people with mental illness. With a new mental health committee in effect under the purview of the parliament, the TEWWY team has been identifying policy issues within her scope of work, as we plan numerous lobbying activities with legislators regarding integrating mental healthcare in schools, local communities/social services, harm reduction programs, mining communities, and so forth.
Prior to lobbying legislators on integrating mental health care in policies with regular service delivery, we have reached out to and are reaching out to more schools that we hope to partner with in providing mental health literacy and promotion as part of their curriculum and/or extra-curricular activities. Among those schools are Aga Khan Mzizima Secondary School and Loyola High School. We have supplied both institutions with mental health question and answer booklets as we collaborate to build on Mental Health Literacy and Mental Health Promotion programs.
By Neema Tembele | Project Leader
By Neema Tembele | Project Leader
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