Dataset Information

Protocol for process evaluation of SMART Mental Health cluster randomised control trial: an intervention for management of common mental disorders in India.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

In India about 95% of individuals who need treatment for common mental disorders like depression, stress and anxiety and substance use are unable to access care. Stigma associated with help seeking and lack of trained mental health professionals are important barriers in accessing mental healthcare. Systematic Medical Appraisal, Referral and Treatment (SMART) Mental Health integrates a community-level stigma reduction campaign and task sharing with the help of a mobile-enabled electronic decision support system (EDSS)-to reduce psychiatric morbidity due to stress, depression and self-harm in high-risk individuals. This paper presents and discusses the protocol for process evaluation of SMART Mental Health.

Methods and analysis

The process evaluation will use mixed quantitative and qualitative methods to evaluate implementation fidelity and identify facilitators of and barriers to implementation of the intervention. Case studies of six intervention and two control clusters will be used. Quantitative data sources will include usage analytics extracted from the mHealth platform for the trial. Qualitative data sources will include focus group discussions and interviews with recruited participants, primary health centre doctors, community health workers (Accredited Social Health Activits) who participated in the project and local community leaders. The design and analysis will be guided by Medical Research Council framework for process evaluations, the Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance (RE-AIM) framework, and the normalisation process theory.

Ethics and dissemination

The study has been approved by the ethics committee of the George Institute for Global Health, India and the Institutional Ethics Committee, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi. Findings of the study will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications, stakeholder meetings, digital and social media platforms.

Trial registration number

CTRI/2018/08/015355.

SUBMITTER: Mukherjee A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9207925 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Background and objectiveCommon mental disorders (CMD) are a leading global burden of disease. Up to 30% of primary care attenders suffer from these disorders but most do not receive evidence-based drug or psychological treatments. There are no trials of interventions which attempt to integrate these treatments into routine primary care in developing countries. The aims of this trial (the MANAS Project) are to evaluate the clinical and cost-effectiveness of a collaborative stepped-care intervention for the treatment of CMD in India.Study designA cluster randomized controlled trial will be implemented in the state of Goa, on the west coast of India. Twenty-four primary care facilities, 12 from the government sector and 12 from the private sector, will be enrolled in two consecutive phases. For each sector, facilities will be randomly allocated within strata defined by urban/rural location, population size and presence of a visiting psychiatrist. Facilities will be randomly allocated to receive the collaborative stepped care intervention or the enhanced usual care control intervention. Both arms share two components of the intervention, viz., routine screening, and in the government clinics provision of antidepressants. In addition, the collaborative stepped care arm also provides a range of psychosocial treatments delivered by a specially trained Health Counselor, and supervision by a visiting Psychiatrist. A total of 3600 primary care attenders who are detected to suffer from a CMD based on a validated screening questionnaire will be recruited. The primary outcome is the proportion of subjects who recover from an ICD10 defined CMD at baseline by 6 months. Additional endpoints at 2 and 12 months will assess the speed and sustainability of achieving the primary outcomes. Other outcomes will include recovery from ICD10 defined depression and incidence of ICD-10 among individuals who were sub-threshold cases at baseline. Economic and disability outcomes will be assessed to estimate incremental cost-effectiveness ratios.ImplicationsThis will be the first trial of the effectiveness of a complex intervention aiming to integrate efficacious treatments for CMD into routine primary care in a developing country. If effective, its findings will have relevance to policy makers who wish to scale up treatments for CMD in primary care across the world, but mostly in those countries where specialist mental health services are few.Study registrationThe MANAS project is registered through the National Institutes of Health sponsored clinical trials registry and has been assigned the identifier: NCT00446407.