As part of a new strategy to re-establish community mental health nursing training in Sri Lanka, Unity in Health has been invited to join the National Institute of Mental Health (NIHM), the country’s largest mental health care provider, and develop a new training module for professionals wishing to work in community based settings.
In 2010 approximately 46 nurses were trained in community mental health skills, and equipped to work across the island in a variety of different settings. Since then and although attempts have been made to re-initiate such training on a regular basis, several obstacles of a bureaucratic and institutional nature have made it impossible for this to take place on a yearly basis.
Image: UHI
Increasing requests from previously trained nurses for supervision and ongoing support, combined with the enthusiasm of NIMH’s training department to re-start such programme, opened a new door to the delivery of sustainable professional development in this area of mental health care.
Unity in Health looks forward to working in partnership with the service, and to facilitate the exchange of human resources key to the success of the community mental health training programme, planned to re-commence later in the year.