Final Theory of Change workshop
A final round Theory of Change (TOC) workshop was conducted on 19th February with adolescents, parents and teachers and with clinicians and policymakers on 20th February 2019. This workshop aimed to give a final shape to the pathway leading towards the project’s impact statement through feedback and discussion, which was created in the first round TOC. It was conducted under the IDEA project, which aims to identify the risk factors of adolescent depression.
The pathway was discussed in detail in these two days and participants’ feedback was included. “TOC shows all the possible pathways leading to change and brings together key stakeholders to create impact by collecting their unique ideas”, said Dr. Kamal Gautam, Principal Investigator for the project. The impact statement for this project is “Capacity and established and utilized to conduct feasible, acceptable, and ethical biological, psychological, and contextual research for the detection and prevention of adolescent depression in Nepal.”
Participants provided their feedback to give a final shape to the TOC pathway prepared in the first phase of the workshop. “We could create clubs for adolescents where they can talk about mental health issues freely. This ensures the use of service by adolescents in problem and also helps in stigma reduction”, said Namita Ghimire, Research Officer at Nepal Health Research Council (NHRC). Dr. Arun Raj Kunwar, Chief of Adolescent and Child Psychiatry at Kanti Children’s Hospital advised that increasing acceptance about adolescent mental health and depression among the parents and teachers through sensitization would help to improve their health seeking behavior.
