INTRODUCTION: Common perinatal mental disorders (CPMDs) are a significant contributor to disability globally for women during and after pregnancy, though the role of occupational therapy in addressing perinatal mental health is only just emerging. CPMDs present a complex challenge for healthcare providers to identify and treat, and often remain undetected and therefore go untreated. The lack of identification in part reflects structural and psychosocial barriers to care that are influenced by mental health stigma. Low and middle-income countries have begun addressing the treatment gap by scaling up psychosocial support through primary healthcare workers, but these providers are often overstretched. Training providers to demonstrate engagement factors through culturally tailored digital methods is an effective and feasible way to scale up psychosocial support.
METHODS: A cinematic training package for maternity care workers in South Africa was designed to demonstrate the important role of empathy in mental health promotion during routine perinatal care. Primary objectives included community engagement, film production and editing, and gathering feedback from key stakeholders regarding the film’s acceptability and feasibility for dissemination across South Africa. The film aims to acknowledge typical challenges faced by maternity care workers while introducing accessible methods to integrate mental health into routine maternity care.
RESULTS: Stakeholder feedback revealed that the cinematic training package and its content are contextually appropriate. Feedback was synthesized to include: shortening scenes, adding on-screen text to highlight empathic skills, and inserting interactive discussion points between scenes.
CONCLUSION: Interdisciplinary stakeholder collaboration that centered community needs led to the development of an innovative and relevant training package to integrate mental health care into low-resource, maternity settings. Recommendations include customizing the training package based on clinic needs, tracking dissemination, and evaluating its impact on maternity care workers and women with CPMDs. The occupational therapy lens was used to engage in strengths-based, person-centered perinatal mental health promotion. / 2023-09-12T00:00:00Z
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/45109 |
| Date | 12 September 2022 |
| Creators | Smith, Leah |
| Contributors | Escher, Anne, Brown, Shelley M. |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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