Resources search

Beneath the rhetoric: Policy to reduce the mental health treatment gap in Africa

COOPER, Sara
2015

Expand view

In this paper I problematize knowledge on reducing the ‘gap’ in treatment produced by 14 national mental health policies in Africa. To contextualize this analysis, I begin with a historic-political account of the emergence of the notion of primary health care and its entanglement within decolonization forces of the 1960s. I unpack how and why this concept was subsequently atrophied, being stripped of its more revolutionary sentiments from the 1980s. Against this backdrop, I show how, although the 14 national mental health policies are saturated with the rhetoric of primary health care and associated concepts of community participation and ownership, in practice they tend to marginalize local meaning-systems and endorse a top-down framework heavily informed by colonial medicine. The policies thus end up reproducing many of the very Eurocentric assumptions that the original primary health care notion sought to transcend. More specifically, the paradigms of evidence-based research/practice and individualised human rights become the gatekeepers of knowledge. These two paradigms, which are deeply embedded within contemporary global mental health discourse, are legislating what are legitimate forms of knowing, and by extension, valid forms of care. I argue that a greater appreciation of the primary health care concept, in its earliest formulation, offers a potentially fruitful terrain of engagement for developing more contextually-embedded and epistemologically appropriate mental health policies in Africa. This in turn might help reduce the current ‘gap’ in mental health care treatment so many countries on the continent face.

 

Disability and the Global South (DGS), 2015, Vol. 2 No. 3

CBR matrix and perceived training needs of CBR workers: a multi-country study

DEEPAK, Sunil
2011

Expand view

CBR Matrix, proposed in the CBR Guidelines, provides a systematic framework for organising and analysing CBR activities. A sample of experienced CBR workers, active at community level in 7 countries , were asked for information about different activities they actually carry out, so as to understand the applicability of CBR Matrix framework in the field. The CBR workers were also asked to identify their most pressing learning needs in different areas of CBR Matrix.

This study shows that CBR Matrix can be a useful framework to understand field-level activities in CBR projects. The study has identified a number of priority learning needs, in terms of different domains of CBR Matrix, and in terms of different disabilities. It also shows that globally, areas related to advocacy, lobbying, legal protection and rights-based approach, are the most important learning needs identified by CBR workers.

Violence free zone : end school-related violence, prevent HIV/AIDS

SALTER, Nick
SCHECHTMAN, Lisa
September 2007

Expand view

The objective of this call to action is to review the extent to which national education plans, the Fast Track Initiative, donor countries, and established international NGOs recognise and comprehensively combat school-related violence (SRV) in a review of 10 African countries. The brief contains five main sections and two Appendices. It outlines the details and consequences of school-related violence; and the major findings and broader trends from the country review process; it focuses on a discussion of models and programs employed to effectively counter SRV and highlights overall best practices; it reviews and critiques donor governments and international agencies in relation to their work on SRV; and it outlines the recommendations and call to action for going to scale with programmes to counter SRV

The Africa campaign on disability and HIV & AIDS

Expand view

The Africa Campaign is a unifying umbrella under which disabled people's organisations, organisations of people living with HIV & AIDS, non-governmental organisations, AIDS services organisations, researchers, activists, and other citizens work collectively to achieve two main objectives: a coordinated response involving persons with disabilities in African countries to achieve inclusive national HIV & AIDS policies and programmes; and equal access for persons with disabilities in Africa to information and services on HIV & AIDS. This website contains information about the campaign and key documents

E-bulletin