NEW DELHI: Community-based anti-stigma campaigns and a digital tool for mental health care helped reduce depression, self-harm and suicide risks among vulnerable adolescents across 60 slum blocks in New Delhi and Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh, a study has found.
India is home to the world’s largest population of teenagers, at 253 million, and nearly one in five suffer from mental health challenges such as anxiety and depression, according to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund.
Young people living in urban slums are particularly vulnerable due to additional stressors such as poverty, limited awareness, and lack of access to mental health care, the researchers said.
The George Institute for Global Health, New Delhi, implemented the Enhancing Adolescent Resilience and Treatment Needs for Mental Health in Indian Slums project, which aims to alleviate mental health problems among adolescents living in economically disadvantaged urban communities in India.
“The ARTEMIS project brought together young people between the ages of 10 and 19 from urban slums in New Delhi and Vijayawada,” said Sandhya Kanaka Yatrajula, Director of the Mental Health Program at the George Institute for Global Health in India. “These young people shared their experiences of stress caused by parental pressure, peer relationships, academic pressure, gender-based restrictions, and fears about the future.”
The findings are published in the Journal of Psychiatry of the American Medical Association.
“The ARTEMIS project was a two-pronged approach to overcome these issues. The first involved using locally designed multimedia campaigns to eliminate the stigma associated with mental disorders,” said Pallabh Mullick, director of research at the George Institute for Global Health in India and the study’s principal investigator.
“The second approach was to use a digital system to screen adolescents for psychiatric disorders and risks of self-harm and provide treatment to those at high risk,” Mollick said.
After one year of ARTEMIS, the group that received the intervention showed significantly better knowledge, attitude and behavior toward mental health than those who did not participate, largely because their increased knowledge helped eliminate social stigma, the researchers said.
The team found that the average difference in behavior and depression scores between the intervention group and the control group was statistically significant at the end of the intervention.
It was also noted that the intervention group experienced a decrease in average depression scores while maintaining stable recovery rates, and the difference in average depression scores between the intervention and control groups at the end of the intervention was statistically significant, the team said.
“The results suggest that a community-based intervention that includes anti-stigma and mobile health components to reduce the risk of depression, suicide, or self-harm among adolescents was effective and achieved high levels of implementation fidelity,” the researchers wrote.
They said the model presented in the study has proven to be feasible and acceptable within community settings, despite barriers, including stigma, parental reluctance, distance to health care centers, and scheduling challenges due to school timing.
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