WP on Mental health report

Prof Chris Dowrick, chair of the WONCA Working Party for Mental Health, reports on activities during the past year.

1. WWPMH internal structures

Our membership is currently over 240. Our largest groupings are from Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific. We have representation across all WONCA regions and constituencies. Our current elected officers are listed on our webpage.

2. Mental health guidance for WONCA members

We encourage primary mental health care input to all WONCA conferences. During the past six months we have enabled participation in the World Conference in Seoul and forthcoming Eastern Mediterranean, Asia-Pacific and European regional conferences.

We continue to collaborate with other WPs and SIGs, including education, WICC, migrant care and the newly formed SIG on adolescents & young people.

We continue to publicise and produce practical guidance documents for family doctors on topics identified as important by WWPMH members.

i. First depression consultation (led by Bruce Arroll, NZ): a shortened version of this document is published in British Journal of General Practice.

ii. Physical health care for people with severe mental illness (led by Alan Cohen, UK and Kim Griswold, USA)

iii. Shared learning for primary mental health care (led by Helen Rodenburg, NZ): we have produced links to accessible online training materials.

iv. Non-drug interventions for psycho-social distress (led by Weng Chin, Hong Kong); we launched our guidance on this topic at the WONCA Asia-Pacific meeting in November and presented it at WONCA Seoul.

v. Core competencies for primary mental health care (led by Chris Dowrick, UK). This was presented at WONCA Seoul and will also be presented at WONCA Kyoto.

vi. Management of medically unexplained symptoms (led by Tim olde Hartmann, Netherlands); a shortened version of this document has been published in the British Journal of General Practice

vii. Mental health care of migrants (led by Maria van den Muijsenberg, Netherlands, chair of WONCA Migrant Care SIG).

viii. Frailty, multi-morbidity and mental health (led by Christos Lionis, Greece).

ix. Dementia (led by Ferdinando Petrazzuoli, Sweden)

x. Adolescent mental health (led by Jane Roberts, UK)

xi. Early years problems (led by Amanda Howe, UK)

We have negotiated a book deal with Taylor & Francis to publish our guidance documents in a single accessible volume, with additional elements on education and service implications.

3. Leadership on global primary mental health care

We continue to advocate for improved primary mental health care on behalf of family doctors and their patients, for example
o Caribbean, Eastern Mediterranean and Ibero-American colleagues continue to organise a series of mhGAP training events.
o Molly Shorthouse (Asia-Pacific) is planning a major mental health initiative for indigenous young people in East Arnhem, Australia.
o A group led by Ryuki Kassai (Asia-Pacific), in collaboration with EACH, has successfully organised a train the trainer programme on depression for family doctors in Japan. The results of this will be presented at a plenary session during WONCA Asia-Pacific in Kyoto (May 2019).
o A consortium involving WONCA, California Academy of Family Physicians and Health Performance Consulting is progressing a Train the Trainers’ initiative to improving family physicians’ management of patients with depression and anxiety across the Asia-Pacific region; this includes workshops at WONCA World in Seoul (October 2018) and WONCA Asia-Pacific in Kyoto (May 2019).
o The International Balint Federation led by Don Nease (North America) and WONCA’s Young Doctors Movement have an active collaboration to provide Balint groups to YDM participants.

We continue to promote external collaborations, including with WHO mhGAP, WPA, WFMH and EACH.
o In the past six months we have offered expert advice to WHO on their guidelines for the physical healthcare for people with severe mental illness (now published); their Quality Rights Toolkit; the primary care version of ICD-11 mental disorders classification; and their proposed mental health diploma for family physicians. In October 2018, I participated in the mhGAP forum in Geneva.
o In December 2018, several WWPMH members contributed to the Universal Health and Mental Health conference in Malta.
o I am member of the WPA-Lancet Clinical Commission on Depression.
o Several WWPMH members will contribute to the WPA World Congress in Lisbon.

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