Inspiring Life in Frozen Communities: Supporting Migrant Women in Brussels to Regain Control over their Lives.

In Brussels, many migrant women without legal status have no or limited access to health care and other basic services. Their access to descent care is mainly hampered by a lack of information, limited financial resources and poor experiences in the past. Three non-governmental organisations joint efforts to help migrant women without legal status to come out of their isolation. Action research during the implementation process was conducted in order to know which elements contributed to increased feelings of trust and reinforced autonomy among the target group and more willingness to support migrants among a larger population. Our major conclusion is that mental health and well-being is largely defined by (the quality of) social relations and interactions - an aspect that is too often forgotten as a result of the medicalization of mental health related problems.

Intégration de la santé mentale dans les services de soins de santé primaires en République démocratique du Congo.

OBJECTIVE: The study aims to document the experience of integrating a mental health care package into the general health care system of Lubero district in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) between 2011 and 2015, and more specifically, the effects of this integration on the access to and use of health services offering mental health care. METHOD: This is a retrospective study using a case study design. Data collected from different project documents and an analytic review of the official reports of the Ministry of Public Health were used for an analysis of the results of the integration. RESULTS: The results indicate that 3,941 patients with mental health problems used the care offered at the health centers and the district hospital between 2012 and 2015. In 2015, the average utilization rate of curative care in health centers for mental health problems was 7 new cases/1,000 inhabitants/year. The majority of these patients were treated on an outpatient basis, at primary health care level. DISCUSSION: Our study shows that it is possible to integrate mental health into existing general health services in the DRC. Nevertheless, the major problems in terms of access and use of basic care in the Lubero district indicate that the success of such an integration depends on the quality of the health system in place and the involvement of a wide range of both health and non-health actors, including key people within communities.

Improving access to mental health care and psychosocial support within a fragile context: a case study from Afghanistan.

As one article in a series on Global Mental Health Practice, Peter Ventevogel and colleagues provide a case study of their efforts to integrate brief, practice-oriented mental health training into the Afghanistan health care system at a time when the system was being rebuilt from scratch.