The systematic medical appraisal, referral and treatment (smart) mental health project: Development and testing of electronic decision support system and formative research to understand perceptions about mental health in rural India

Abstract

Common mental disorders (CMD) such as depression, suicidal risk and emotional/medicall unexplained complaints affect a large number of people in India, but few receiv appropriate care. Key reasons for this include few trained mental health professionals an stigma associated with mental health. A potential approach to address poor access to car is by training village healthcare workers in providing basic mental health care, and harnessin India's vast mobile network to support such workers using mobile-based applications We propose an intervention to implement such an approach that incorporates the use o mobile-based electronic decision support systems (EDSS) to provide mental health service for CMD, combined with a community-based anti-stigma campaign. This will b implemented and evaluated across 42 villages in Andhra Pradesh, a south Indian state This paper discusses the development and testing of the EDSS, and the formative researc that informed the anti-stigma campaign.