What matters in mental health care? A co-design approach to developing clinical supervision tools for practitioner competency development.

Background: Specialised mental health (MH) care providers are often absent or scarcely available in low resource and humanitarian settings (LRHS), making MH training and supervision for general health care workers (using task-sharing approaches) essential to scaling up services and reducing the treatment gap for severe and common MH conditions. Yet, the diversity of settings, population types, and professional skills in crisis contexts complicate these efforts. A standardised, field tested instrument for clinical supervision would be a significant step towards attaining quality standards in MH care worldwide. Methods: A competency-based clinical supervision tool was designed by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) for use in LRHS. A systematic literature review informed its design and assured its focus on key clinical competencies. An initial pool of behavioural indicators was identified through a rational theoretical scale construction approach, tested through waves of simulation and reviewed by 12 MH supervisors in seven projects where MSF provides care for severe and common MH conditions. Results: Qualitative analysis yielded two sets of competency grids based on a supervisee's professional background: one for 'psychological/counselling' and another for 'psychiatric/mhGAP' practitioners. Each grid features 22-26 competencies, plus optional items for specific interventions. While the structure and content were assessed as logical by supervisors, there were concerns regarding the adequacy of the tool to field reality. Conclusions: Humanitarian settings have specific needs that require careful consideration when developing capacity-building strategies. Clinical supervision of key competencies through a standardised instrument represents an important step towards ensuring progress of clinical skills among MH practitioners.

Erratum: Competency-based mental health supervision: evidence-based tool needs for the humanitarian context - ERRATUM.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1017/gmh.2022.23.].

"She Got Spoilt": Perceptions of Victims of Child Sexual Abuse in Ghana.

International research has commented on social stigma as a key reason for nondisclosure of child sexual abuse. However, the actual components of this social stigma frequently remain unexplored. The present study deals with perceptions of consequences of child sexual abuse among professionals and laypeople in Ghana (N = 44), employing a bystander perspective. As a qualitative study using a grounded theory framework, it considers these consequences in light of their underlying beliefs about child and adolescent development, particularly in relation to gender-based expectations placed on girls and boys. Consequences of child sexual abuse could be divided into sexual health consequences, beliefs about "destroyed innocence" and beliefs about a "destroyed future," which were strongly related to the sexual nature of the violence perpetrated. These perceived consequences of child sexual abuse hold implications for what surviving child sexual abuse means on a social level. Implications for practice are discussed on the basis of the data analysis.

Improving Empathy in the Prevention of Sexual Abuse Against Children and Youngsters.

The aim of this research is to study the improvement of empathy in child-care professionals (i.e., teachers, psychologists, social workers) involved in the prevention of sexual abuse against children and youngsters. An E-Learning training pilot program was conducted with pre- and post-measures (T(1) = at the beginning and T(2) = after 6 months) using the program's standardized questionnaires of Situational Empathy and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) as a Dispositional Empathy measure. A sample of 42 experienced professionals involved in activities with children and youngsters was obtained from the International Movement of Popular Education in Latin America called "Fe y Alegría." Significant progress was found in the scales of Situational Empathy and in some Coping subscales. The final outcomes seem to indicate that the prevention program elicits important changes in the cognitive sphere and that these changes are more intense when the implication level for the situation is greater. This research shows that empathy can be improved through professional experience and careful situational involvement.

Child sexual abuse in the context of the Roman Catholic Church: a review of literature from 1981-2013.

Child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has been increasingly recognized as a problem not limited to individual institutions. Recent inquiry commission reports provide substantial information on offense dynamics, but their conclusions have not been synthesized with empirical research to date. The aim of this systematic literature review was to bring together key findings and identify gaps in the evidence base. The three main focus points were (a) types of publications and methodology used, (b) frequency information on child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, (c) individual factors in offending, and (d) institutional factors in offending. It was found that reports, legal assessments, and research on child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church provide extensive descriptive and qualitative information for five different countries. This includes individual psychological factors (static risk predictors, multiple trajectories) and institutional factors (opportunity, social dynamics) as well as prevalence rates illustrating a high "dark figure" of child sexual abuse.