Major new Centre for Global Mental Health launches
10 October 2009
The Centre for Global Mental Health (CGMH), a collaborative initiative of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Institute of Psychiatry (IoP), under the umbrella of King’s Health Partners (KHP), was launched yesterday at LSHTM.
CGMH aims to establish a centre of excellence fostering research and capacity building in policy, prevention, treatment and care of mental illness worldwide. It aims to close the treatment gap for people living with mental disorders by increasing the coverage of cost-effective interventions. While access to affordable, effective treatment is a problem in all world regions, the focus of the centre’s work will be poorer countries where health systems are greatly under-resourced, and populations are particularly under-served.
CGMH will comprise the largest program of international mental health research in the UK and will develop a new suite of activities including: leading and promoting new research from funders such as the Wellcome Trust, DFID and MRC; establishing a new Masters degree in Global Mental Health based on existing LSHTM and IoP Masters programmes, which will form the only MSc of its kind in the world; developing distance based learning tools for global mental health; strengthening LSHTM/KHP’s competitive advantage in UK mental health research bids.
The launch featured presentations by the two Directors of the CGMH: Martin Prince, Professor of Epidemiological Psychiatry, IoP, KHP; and Vikram Patel, Professor of International Mental Health and Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Research Fellow at LSHTM. Case studies of ongoing work were presented including: facilitating provisions for mental healthcare in Goa; mental healthcare for those recovering from civil war in Uganda; and surveys of ageing, dementia and other chronic diseases in Latin America, Nigeria, India and China. The IoP's Dr Mariella Guerra presented her work on the 10/66 Dementia Research Group, Professor Graham Thornicroft, IoP, gave a presentation on stigma and the community trail for people with schizophrenia in India; and IoP PhD student Rosie Mayston outlined her work on the UMEED HIV, common mental disorders/cognitive impairment project in India.
The Keynote speech was given by Dr Benedetto Saraceno, Director of Mental Health & Substance Abuse at the World Health Organization, and a panel discussion on the issues surrounding global mental health was chaired by Richard Horton, Chief Editor of The Lancet. Presentations were also given by Professor Rick Trainor and Professor Robert Lechler on behalf of King’s College London and King’s Health Partners respectively.
The launch was timed to coincide with World Mental Health Day today, the day for global mental health education, awareness and advocacy first celebrated in 1992 at the initiative of the World Federation for Mental Health. This week also sees the publication of a new series of features in PLoS Medicine on packages of care for mental and neurological disorders, guest edited by Graham Thornicroft, Professor of Community Psychiatry, IoP and joint Theme Lead Stakeholder Participation, National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and IoP at King’s.
For further information contact Clair McInally, King's Health Partners 0207 188 4043/ clair.mcinally@kcl.ac.uk or Sally Hall, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine 020 7927 2073 / sally.hall@lshtm.ac.uk