FaMHe: A research and capacity development partnership to build a household support system for people living with a severe mental disorders in South Africa.

Summary

South Africa has a high burden of severe mental disorders. The country promotes deinstitutionalisation for people living with a severe mental disorder (PSMD) – shifting the locus of care from hospitals to local communities. This push, however, has not been fit with an according care model in these communities. PSMD are discharged into households without any support – often resulting in a cyclical pattern of short-term readmissions to the hospitals that they have been discharged from, sometimes with devastating consequences. The project aims to build a research partnership between the Univ. of KwaZulu-Natal, the Univ. of Cape Town and the Univ. of Antwerp which will (1) strengthen local research capacity (building a PhD program and exchanging knowledge on the potential of households in health care), (2) strengthen the relationships with policy makers and societal stakeholders (building a multi-stakeholder network and improving science-society communication) and (3) improve the curriculum of social work auxiliaries (and peer supporters) providing household support. The combination of these activities is aimed at enabling a research program to durably improve the well-being of PSMD using a household intervention – thereby stopping the revolving door syndrome and the devastating social/economic/health consequences it creates.

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