Webinar on maternal mental health

A webinar titled “Maternal Mental Health: The Missing ‘M’ in Mental Health” was held virtually on 19 January 2022. It was the sixth webinar in the web series for capacity building of early-career researchers in Nepal. Prasansa Subba and Pragya Shrestha were the speakers for the webinar which was moderated by Ritika Singh. A total of 57 participants from different backgrounds participated in the webinar.

First, the moderator gave a brief introduction to the webinar and Dr. Brandon Kohrt from George Washington University introduced the speakers. Then the first speaker Prasansa Subba, Ph.D. Fellow at the University of Liverpool gave her presentation on ‘The Missing M in Mental Health’. She shared her career trajectory and the findings of her M.Phil. Study as part of the Programme for Improving Mental Health Care (PRIME) project. As part of this project, mental health was integrated into the primary health centers through training, supervision, and advocacy at the health facility level, community level, and Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHVs) level. Ms. Subba then shared that maternal mental health was also a part of this project where detection and referral of maternal depression were done in four steps. She concluded her presentation by saying that during the intervention, they realized that health-facility-based intervention was not sufficient to address the maternal mental health problems in the community.

The presentation of the second speaker, Pragya Shrestha, certified therapist and research fellow at the University of Liverpool, was focused on community-based maternal psychosocial intervention. She also shared her career trajectory and gave details about the current project she’s involved in, The Thinking Healthy (THP) program. This program works in three areas: mother’s health, mother-child relationship, and mother-other relationship. It is currently being adapted in the Nepali context. She then explained the steps of the program’s cultural adaptation process in Nepal and the changes brought about by the adaptation.

After the presentation, participants asked questions to the speakers about the issue. The questions mainly focused on the cultural adaptation process, symptoms of maternal depression, Ph.D. journey, implementation of the intervention, evidence of maternal mental health in Nepal, etc. In the end, the participants thanked the organizers and the speakers for organizing the webinar on a much-needed but neglected issue.

The webinar can be watched at the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IbFSGIhie8&ab_channel=TPONepal