Catalyze, inspire, innovate for mental health
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In this issue:
- Events
- Events in the local community
- Events beyond the Greater Boston Area
- Impact Story of the Week:
- NeuroMex hosts it's first Mexico Leaders' Meeting in Mexico City
- Global Mental Health in the News
- Young People Will Transform Global Mental Health: A call to prioritize global action on mental health for young people
- Survey Participation
- Help out your GMH colleagues by filling out these surveys and participating in their research studies
- Opportunities
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Global Mental Health Events in the Local Community
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Monday June 17th 6:00pm
Boston University School of Medicine
Join us for the June Global Dinner talk with
Christy A. Denckla, PhD.
Dr. Christy A. Denckla is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a Research Fellow at the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard whose work focuses and risk and resilience following exposure to adversity. Free & open to all. For more information and to RSVP, email
globallocalcenter@bmc.org
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Global Mental Health Events beyond the Greater Boston area
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A Give an Hour Collective Impact Effort
June 9th - June 15th 2019
Happening now!!!
A Week to Change Direction will be a week of action, advocacy, culture change and fundraising for organizations, corporations, universities, communities, and individuals! Our aim is to increase knowledge, raise awareness and increase support for efforts that are working to change the culture of mental health globally so that all in need receive the care and support they deserve.
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NeuroMex hosts it's first Mexico Leaders' Meeting in Mexico City
a conversation with Brena Sena, Program Manager for the NeuroMex Program
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GMH@Harvard Question:
Could you describe the NeuroMex program to the community?
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Q: Could you share some more information about the meeting you had in May?
A:
On May 20th - 21st the NeuroMex team hosted its first Mexico Leaders’ Meeting in Mexico City, Mexico. The event convened leaders from the multi-site study to kick-start the program. Topics discussed included the latest advancements in neuropsychiatric genetics research and the context of Mexico, clinical perspectives of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and the importance of including Latin American ancestry in psychiatric genetics research. 20+ leaders from the National Institute of Psychiatry in Mexico City including Mexico PI Beatriz Camarena and mental health leader María Elena Medina-Mora as well as psychiatric and health institution leaders from the states of Queretaro, Campeche, and Guanajuato attended the event.
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Q: Was there a moment/experience that stands out to you from the meeting in Mexico?
A: One of the most powerful experiences has been in seeing our clinical-researchers in Mexico develop as a team and build skills to expand this work in the future. Seeing our Mexican collaborators roll-play the recruitment of participants into the study has been one of the most impactful moments thus far; experiencing the sensitivity and care that each of the clinician-researchers undertakes to ensure informed consent of participants through the use of the UBACC instrument which supports in assessing decisional capacity of participants in participating in clinical research, and the empathy and thoughtfulness in answering concerns and questions of participants has been incredibly powerful.
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Q: Where do you see the biggest need?
A:
One of the biggest needs is in building strong collaborations across institutions and fields but there is also a great need in the support and development of research efforts on the ground in the countries we work with. Without the training and development of research and analytical skills, the data that we collect will not be accessible to Mexican researchers. A very important need and goal of the NeuroMex program is to develop skills in country so that Mexican clinical-researchers are writing and publishing on the data collected from Mexican populations and so that they can be a part of and lead in the development of treatments and clinical practices that will benefit their populations.
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Q: Where do you see the biggest impacts of the work of the NeuroMex program?
A:
One of the main impetus for the collaboration is that only 1.17% of samples analyzed under genome-wide association studies (GWAS) come from Latin American populations, where the majority of samples are from European and white populations leading to Latin American and Mexican populations not benefiting from the recent genomic revolution, the development of new drug targets, and novel treatments and therapies. Thus one of the biggest impacts of this work and hope is that this will bring Mexico into the psychiatric genetics and genomics map and propel this work further in the country so that Mexican populations can benefit from discoveries in the field
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Q: What were the biggest takeaways from the NeuroMex meeting?
A:
Some of the biggest lesson learned and takeaways in the recent Mexico Leaders Meeting and, in this work, thus far has been the power of collaboration across countries and institutions. I am grateful for the leadership of
Dr. Karestan Koenen
and our Mexico PI
Dr. Beatriz Camarena
for being examples in the frontier of collaborative global mental health work bringing together the best minds in clinical psychiatry, genetics, research, and training working to push limitations and boundaries in the field.
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Q: How do you recommend others become involved?
A:
I highly recommend firstly becoming aware of the stark inequalities and lack of diversity that exists in current genetics and genomics studies and in studies of psychiatric genetics in particular. Secondly, I urge others to become involved in this work by supporting efforts to reduce disparities in access to technologies and training related to psychiatry, genetics, and research in non-US and European countries. This is greatly important especially during a time where research funds are being cut all over Latin American, and finally I recommend that folks work within collaborations that have an explicit aim of inclusion and work with other populations as we advance in fields such as psychiatric genetics so that we are not developing treatments and novel therapies that are not as effective for non-white European populations.
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Q: What do you enjoy most about this work?
A:
Working between our teams in Boston and Mexico has been the most fulfilling part of this work. I get to work between Spanish and English on a daily basis and among psychiatrists, psychologists, geneticists, data scientists, managers, and co-workers that truly know the meaning of global mental health work and what it takes to bring this work forth to all.
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Global Mental Health in the News
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Ensuring full and direct participation of young people in policy-making is key to transform youth mental health. See these three recommendations on youth mental health fresh out of
#WHA72
by the
#LancetGMH
Young Leaders &
@MHInnovation
1. Involve young people in policy
2. Invest in prevention and early intervention
3. Strengthen mental health literacy
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Global Mental Health Survey Participation
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Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI)
has commissioned the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) to create the world’s largest survey on people’s attitudes around dementia, which will form the basis for the World Alzheimer Report 2019, to be released in September.
In particular, ADI wants to hear from:
- The general public
- Health and care professionals
- People living with dementia
- Carers of people living with dementia
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(
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ervice to
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ar
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)
Professor Vikram Patel and Dr. John Naslund of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School with colleagues at Sangath are leading an important project to develop a brief online measure of non-specialist health worker competence for delivering evidence-based psychological treatments for depression in primary care facilities in low-resource settings in India.
As part of this work, their team is conducting a short survey to test and refine the different items that may be included as part of the measure.
With this survey, we are reaching out to clinicians, students, health workers, and those not in health care fields who have both had training or who do not have any training in delivering psychological treatments for depression.
It is important that we have a mix of individuals who are familiar with delivering psychological depression treatments and those who are not at all familiar to answer the survey questions.
We would be very grateful if you would be willing to answer these questions. We would also be delighted if you would be willing to share our survey within your network and with other colleagues, students or others who may be interested. Thank you for your help. Any questions please reach out to ESSENCE Research Assistant,
Juliana Lynn Restivo
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The Department of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto Canada
The Department of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai hospital welcomes applications for a Trial Coordinator to work on a project that endeavors to implement and evaluate the delivery of a brief, evidence-based, psychological treatment of behavioural activation for perinatal depression and anxiety. This project is funded by the
Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI)
. The Trial Coordinator reports to the Principal Investigator. Candidates can email their CV and cover letters directly to Dr.
Daisy Singla
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MGH Global Health, position based in Mbarara, Uganda
The Project Coordinator will work on an international research study with researchers at MGH Global Health as well as with research team members and collaborators in Mbarara, Uganda. This position is ideal for someone intending to pursue further study in epidemiology, global health research, medicine, psychology, or public health. Questions - reach out to Dr.
Alex Tsai, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, MGH
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Welcoming all professionals involved in public health aspects of mental health to the 2nd International Public Mental Health Conference, of the European Public Health Association (EUPHA) Section on Public Mental Health, to be held in Jerusalem, Israel, June 19-21, 2019. Public mental health is a way of viewing psychiatry through the needs of the community, the public resources available to meet those needs, and a call for mental health professionals, epidemiologists and policy planners to rally together to meet those needs.
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Under the direction of Dr. Charles Nelson, the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience is seeking a project coordinator to implement and administer the day-to-day operations and functions of a large, multi-site project conducted in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The coordinator will be based in Boston and will work closely with research staff in the US and Bangladesh on oversight of experiments, coordination between sites, maintenance of data quality, and planning of study activities. See link for more details.
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Professor Shekhar Saxena
is seeking a student research assistant for part-time work on projects related to Global Mental Health at Harvard (GMH@Harvard). The work will primarily involve researching and preparing background documents for a new project “Countdown Mental Health 2030” but assistance on other GMH@Harvard projects may also be needed.
The position is suited for Harvard post-doctoral students with interest in mental health, but exceptional candidates at pre-doctoral level will also be considered.
Position is limited to Harvard students ONLY -
Please do not apply if you are not a current Harvard student.
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Centre for Mental Health Law and Policy, Indian Law Society, Pune, India is pleased to announce ‘International Diploma in Mental Health, Human Rights and Law’ for the academic year 2019-20. The international diploma is run by Indian Law Society in collaboration with World Health Organization (WHO). Offered as a distance learning program to accommodate working professionals across the globe, this diploma enables you to integrate human rights into your practice. Last date for applications: June 30th 2019
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Research Assistant position is available beginning in June 2019 interested in working on a mixed methods psychosocial intervention project for young mothers. Applicant must be bilingual in English/Spanish and be able to translate transcripts of interviews from Spanish into English. Opportunities for co-authorship of papers are available. To apply, please send a resume and contact information for two references by email to
Dr. Lauren Friedman
. Applications will be considered as they arrive.
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McLean Hospital’s Institute for Technology in Psychiatry (ITP) brings together thought leaders in health care, data science, technology, industry, patient advocacy, academic research, and beyond for this two-day summit (October 28- 29th 2019) to build on the promise of technology in the diagnosis and delivery of mental health care across the life span. Interested in sharing your work at Technology in Psychiatry Summit 2019? Registered attendees are invited to
submit a proposal
for an oral presentation or poster. The revised submission deadline is Friday, June 14, at 11:59pm.
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The Labs of Cognitive Neuroscience at Boston Children’s Hospital are seeking a full-time Research Data Manager to work on four dynamic research projects: The Bucharest Early Intervention Project, Early Institutionalization Intervention Impact Project, the Bangladesh Early Adversity Neuroimaging Project, and the Emotion Project. Three of the projects, each conducted overseas, investigate the effects of early adversity and one, conducted in lab, examines the development of emotion processing and anxiety. See link for more details.
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Global Mental Health @ Harvard Newsletter!
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