Innovation summary

In Ghana, only two in every 100 people with mental health problems get the help they need. Human resource limitations and uneven distribution of services contribute to the treatment gap.

The goal of the Kintampo Project is to provide care close to people’s homes in poor, rural areas throughout Ghana by training and supporting a new community mental health workforce. In the five years since the Kintampo Project was launched, the trained community workforce, and the number of people they serve, has more than doubled.

  • Curricula developed and delivered to two new types of mental health worker to provide culturally-appropriate treatment for mental disorders

  • National training center supported by regional ‘hub and spoke’ centers to provide professional placements including remote learning through social media for students and graduates

  • A variety of detection, treatment and support tasks are shifted from centralized mental health services to community-level providers

Impact summary

  • 96% increase in size of trained community mental health workforce; 89% increase in medical psychiatric workforce

  • 200% increase in the number of people treated for mental illness in Ghana

"The Kintampo Project is a timely solution to the woefully inadequate mental health human resource challenge and poor geographical access to mental health care facing Ghana."

Priscilla Tawiah, a Kintampo Project Preceptor from Volta Region

Innovation details

New curricula and innovative delivery

  • Developing and training two new types of mental health worker to provide culturally-appropriate treatment for mental disorders

  • A national training centre supported by regional ‘hub and spoke’ training centres to provide professional placements including remote learning through social media for students and graduates

New cadres of workers

  • Community mental health officers receive one year training and are able to detect mental illness, provide ongoing help and support to patients and their families, and raise community awareness to reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness

  • Clinical psychiatric officers receive two years training and are able to diagnose mental illness and prescribe medication (supervised by Ghana’s small number of psychiatrists)

Ongoing Support

  • Building professional networks and offering ongoing professional development to support and retain the new workforce

Collaboration

  • Community mental health workers collaborate with traditional healers and church groups to build relationships and demonstrate the effectiveness of their approach

Key drivers

A major focus for the Kintampo Project is on sustainability, ensuring that the education and development of community health workers in Ghana continues into the future.

  • Workers are trained with locally relevant qualifications
  • A path for career progression is offered to retain workers in the mental health sector
  • Continuing professional development is offered to ensure quality

Challenges

Funding
  • Obtaining grants and raising funds has been extremely time-consuming for the UK team, and is not generally an area of expertise for educators and clinicians
  • Managing funds via an NHS charity at a time of UK economic recession (resolved by founding a non-NHS charity to manage funds)
Coordination
  • Keeping all relevant stakeholders in Ghana informed and involved (resolved for students and graduates by adopting an SMS messaging system to keep in contact)

Continuation

  • By 2018 the Kintampo Project aims to train 1000 community to treat over 340,000 people every year, which equates to the number of people treated annually by upper-middle income countries
  • The Tropical Health Education Trust is considering scaling up the Kintampo Project to other African countries

Partners

Funders

Fundraising, grants and charitable donations managed by The Kintampo Trust, a UK registered charity.

Grants received from:

Evaluation methods

The Kintampo Project currently carries out routine monitoring and evaluation of process data. Impact on treatment outcomes has not yet been assessed.

Cost of implementation

The cost so far in grants and charitable donated funds has been approximately £175,000; however, this doesn’t account for the high non-monetary costs associated with the innovation, such as:

  • Extensive voluntary input from senior UK experts in medical education, psychiatry and ancillary services (librarians, IT specialists, communications and media)

  • Extra unpaid time from mental health specialists and educationists in Ghana

Impact details

  • Increasing the trained community mental health workforce by 96% (from 308 to 604) and the medical psychiatric workforce by 89% (from 18 to 34)

  • There are now 296 new practitioners working across all 10 Regions of Ghana, reaching the remotest communities

  • This has resulted in 200% increase in the number of people treated for mental illness in Ghana (from 67,792 in 2011 to 154,322 in 2013)

References

  1. Roberts M et al. (2013). The mental health system in Ghana: full report. Kintampo, Ghana: The Kintampo Project.
  2. The Kintampo Project (2013). The year we graduated: project report 2012/13. Kintampo, Ghana: The Kintampo Project.

Research

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