Today’s episode is presented by the American Case Management Association. Join our host, Deb McElroy, along with featured guest, Dr. Vikram Patel. Dr. Patel is the Pershing Square Professor of Global Health and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at the Harvard Medical School. He is a psychiatrist whose work over the past two decades has focused on addressing the vast unmet needs for mental health care, especially in low resourced settings.  He holds honorary professorships at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, the Public Health Foundation of India, and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

The pandemic has led to an economic downturn and associated increase in the prevalence of mental health problems globally and considerably worsened the pre-existing crisis of unmet need for care. Dr. Patel argues this presents a historic opportunity to reimagine mental health care, by scaling interventions designed to improve the access, quality, and person-centered features of care. Several programs are discussed throughout this discussion, including the Mental Health for All Lab, the Global Mental Health Initiative at Harvard and Sangath.

Resources referenced by Dr. Patel include:

EMPOWER program - www.empower.care This is a not-for-profit effort of Harvard Medical School's GlobalMentalHealth@Harvard initiative to build the community based mental health workforce.

Mental Health for All Lab -  https://mentalhealthforalllab.hms.harvard.edu/This provides information about the research program led by Dr. Patel at Harvard.

RAND Corporation report on transforming mental health in the U.S. - https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA889-1.html

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