This events is hosted by the Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences.
Depression is the single largest health care burden in the world, with no other illness accounting for even half its burden. Yet for many developing countries, the treatment gap for depression is unacceptably large due to limited mental health training and shortage of mental health professionals. Task-shifting and sharing mental health services are needed to close the treatment gap. One recommended solution is collaborative care, which is a team based model, where mental health specialists support non-mental health providers such as physicians, nurses, and lay health workers to deliver aspects of mental health services. Victoria Ngo's presentation will provide an overview of task shifting depression care and strategies for integrating mental health services into priority platforms and summarize findings from a series of controlled trials in Vietnam, as an example of effective models for task-shifting. She will close with lesson learned from these projects and future direction in terms of task-shifting mental health services in developing countries and other low-resource settings.
About the Speaker: Victoria Ngo is an Associate Professor of Community Health and Social Sciences at the City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy (CUNY SPH), Director of the CUNY Center for Innovation in Mental Health, and Director of Global Mental Health, CUNY Center for Immigrant, Refugee and Global Health, and an adjunct behavior scientist at the RAND Corporation. Also a licensed clinical psychologist, she has expertise in developing, evaluating, and implementing evidence- based treatments, such as cognitive behavioral therapy for depression, anxiety, and trauma in diverse communities in the United States and abroad. Ngo specializes in implementation strategies, such as use of community partnerships, task-shifting evidence-based mental health practices, and integration of mental health care into more accessible service settings, including primary care, cancer care, maternal health, HIV, and other community-based services. She also leads a USAID funded Learning Collaborative for Mental Health and Psychosocial Services for Trauma Exposed Populations in Low and Middle Income Countries and is a member of the CDC Cancer Prevention and Control Research Network (CPCRN) and co-leads the Mental Health and Psychosocial Integration Workgroup within this network. Since 2000, she has worked to develop research and clinical training capacity and infrastructure in Vietnam which has been supported by NIMH and Grand Challenges of Canada, work which she will be speaking about at the event.