Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T06:52:56.275Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Child and adolescent mental health in sub-Saharan Africa: a perspective from clinicians and researchers

Part of: Children's Mental Health Collection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Jacqueline Phillips Owen ,
Benjamin Baig ,
Catherine Abbo  and
Yonas Baheretibeb
Jacqueline Phillips Owen
Affiliation:
KEMRI–Wellcome Collaborative Programme, Kilifi, Kenya Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, UK, email jacqueline.owen@kcl.ac.uk
Benjamin Baig
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, UK
Catherine Abbo
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, College of Health Sciences, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda
Yonas Baheretibeb
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

There is a widening mental health treatment gap for children and adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa. The region has few economic or human resources dedicated to the mental health of children and young people. The World Health Organization's Mental Health Gap Action Plan and the push for mental health to be included in the Millennium Development Goals have raised the profile of child mental health but comparatively few studies have estimated prevalence rates or assessed needs or tested interventions in African countries. In most countries there is no clear pathway to access treatment, especially in-patient facilities. This article considers these issues from clinical, educational and research perspectives.

Type
Special Paper
Information
BJPsych International , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , May 2016 , pp. 45 - 47
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists 2016

References

Belfer, M. L. (2008) Child and adolescent mental disorders: the magnitude of the problem across the globe. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 49, 226–236.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Belfer, M. L. & Saxena, S. (2006) WHO child atlas project. Lancet, 367, 551–552.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cortina, M. A., Sodha, A., Fazel, M., et al (2012) Prevalence of child mental health problems in sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 166, 276–281.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fazel, M., Patel, V., Thomas, S., et al (2014) Mental health interventions in schools in low-income and middle-income countries. Lancet Psychiatry, 1, 388–398.Google Scholar
Global Burden of Disease Study (2015) Global, regional, and national age-sex specific all-cause and cause-specific mortality for 240 causes of death, 1990–2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013. Lancet, 385, 117–171.Google Scholar
Goodman, A., Heiervang, E., Fleitlich-Bilyk, B., et al (2012) Cross-national differences in questionnaires do not necessarily reflect comparable differences in disorder prevalence. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 47, 1321–1331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ho, T. P., Leung, P. W. L., Luk, E. S. L., et al (1996) Establishing the constructs of childhood behavioral disturbances in a Chinese population: a questionnaire study. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 24, 417–431.Google Scholar
Kieling, C., Baker-Henningham, H., Belfer, M., et al (2011) Global mental health 2. Child and adolescent mental health worldwide: evidence for action. Lancet, 378, 1515–1525.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shatkin, J. P. B. (2004) The global absence of child and adolescent mental health policy. Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 9, 104–108.Google Scholar
UNICEF (2013) Committing to Child Survival: A Promise Renewed (Progress Report 2013). United Nations Children's Emergency Fund.Google Scholar
WHO (2010) MHGap Intervention Guide for Mental, Neurological and Substance Use Disorders in Non-Specialised Mental Health Settings. Mental Health Gap Action Programme. World Health Organization.Google Scholar
Wilmshurst, J. M., Kakooza-Mwesige, A. & Newton, C. R. (2014) The challenges of managing children with epilepsy in Africa. Seminars in Pediatric Neurology, 21, 36–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.