"A labor of love": Integrating mental health and HIV care: Lessons from a multicountry mental health learning network.

Mental health conditions among people living with HIV (PLWH) are important to address as they adversely affect quality of life, impede adherence to HIV treatment and increase mortality. Planning for integrating mental health care in resource-limited HIV care settings requires substantial effort. Learning networks are a useful way to exchange knowledge between countries about best and current practices in planning mental health care for PLWH. This paper describes the launch of a mental health learning network within a global health implementing center and the lessons learned across participating members from six countries: the United States, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Zimbabwe, Malawi and India. Lessons learned from the learning network sessions spanned four broad domains: (i) the need for routine and integrated mental health data collection, (ii) developing standardized protocols to implement mental health care, (iii) adequate training and supervision of health care staff and (iv) prioritization of mental health care integration by program funders. We find that time and resource constraints can be barriers to shared leadership and sustainability of learning networks. Prioritizing learning networks as an important component of integrated HIV and mental health care programs is one of the potential strategies to ensure long-term continuity.

Global Mental Health: Where We Are and Where We Are Going.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: To summarize recent findings in global mental health along several domains including socioeconomic determinants, inequities, funding, and inclusion in global mental health research and practice. RECENT FINDINGS: Mental illness continues to disproportionately impact vulnerable populations and treatment coverage continues to be low globally. Advances in integrating mental health care and adopting task-shifting are accompanied by implementation challenges. The mental health impact of recent global events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, geo-political events, and environmental change is likely to persist and require coordinated care approaches for those in need of psychosocial support. Inequities also exist in funding for global mental health and there has been gradual progress in terms of building local capacity for mental health care programs and research. Lastly, there is an increasing effort to include people with lived experiences of mental health in research and policy shaping efforts. The field of global mental health will likely continue to be informed by evidence and perspectives originating increasingly from low- and middle-income countries along with ongoing global events and centering of relevant stakeholders.