ENHANCE Sri Lanka

Introduction

Background & Rationale:

Perinatal depression is depression that occurs during or after pregnancy. It has negative impacts on the health of the mother and the child.
Perinatal depression, though prevalent a neglected health issue in Sri Lanka. No psychosocial interventions have been introduced to the Maternal and Child Health Programme to address perinatal depression in community settings. One of the main barriers to such integration is the lack of trained mental healthcare professionals who can provide necessary support and care within communities. Task shifting to address the treatment gap in perinatal depression, especially in Low- and Middle-Income Countries is the way forward. Task-shifting for mental health is, delegating tasks to an existing or new workforce with or without health training backgrounds.
Thinking Healthy Programme (THP) is a low-intensity task-shifted psychosocial intervention for perinatal depression endorsed by the World Health Organization as the first- line of treatment for Perinatal depression. THP has been producing promising results and high community engagement and acceptance in other Low- & Middle-Income Countries such as Pakistan. It is timely to implement such interventions within Sri Lanka to address the treatment gap for perinatal depression.

ENHANCE Sri Lanka project:
ENHANCE Sri Lanka is the Sri Lankan arm of the ENHANCE programme (Scaling-up Care for Perinatal Depression through Technological Enhancements to the ‘Thinking Healthy Programme’) funded by National Institute for Health & Care Research (Grant Award ID: NIHR200817), United Kingdom.
The ENHANCE Sri Lanka project aims to adapt and integrate the THP into the Sri Lankan context. It is implemented in three phases.
Phase 1: The THP will be adapted to the Sri Lankan context using a co-designing approach.
Phase 2: Potential facilitators and barriers to implementing task-shifted Perinatal Mental Health Programme (THP) in rural community settings in Sri Lanka will be explored.
Phase 3: An implementation strategy to integrate THP into the Sri Lanka healthcare system will be developed.