Lessons learned through piloting a community-based SMS referral system for common mental health disorders used by female community health volunteers in rural Nepal.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

The Community Informant Detection Tool (CIDT) is a paper-based proactive case detection strategy with evidence for improving help-seeking behavior for mental healthcare. Key implementation barriers for the paper-based CIDT include delayed reporting of cases and lack of active follow up. We used mobile phones and structured text messages to improve timeliness of case reporting, encouraging follow up, and case record keeping. 36 female community health volunteers piloted this mobile phone CIDT (mCIDT) for three months in 2017 in rural Nepal.

Results

Only 8 cases were identified by health volunteers using mCIDT, and only two of these cases engaged with health services post-referral. Accuracy with the mCIDT was considerably lower than paper-based CIDT, especially among

SUBMITTER: Bhardwaj A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7328268 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature