The Carter Center has now trained 166 mental health clinicians in Liberia, exceeding its goal of 150 in an ongoing effort to help the West African nation’s health ministry meet its dire need for expanding access to care in this largely neglected field.
Before the Carter Center began its work in 2010, there were 300,000 Liberians for every one trained psychiatrist in a country still suffering from the after effects of a 10-year civil war that ended in 2003. In addition to lack of professionals and medicine, unfamiliarity with mental illness led to social stigmas and misconceptions that hindered treatment.
The Atlanta-based center instituted a free six-month program to train nurses and physicians assistants as mental health clinicians, a move that paid off during the 2014 Ebola epidemic that hit Liberia particularly hard, killing more than 4,800 people.
Spread throughout the country with the largest concentration working in the capital, Monrovia, some program alumni worked directly in Ebola treatment units over the last year. Others have set up clinical practices in prison systems, trained nurse midwives to screen for maternal depression, treated refugees from the Ivory Coast and provided support to families affected by Ebola.
This year, the Carter Center started a three-year program to address the psychological effects of the Ebola crisis, an effort funded by the Japanese government through the World Bank.
For more information on the Carter Center’s mental health work in Liberia, click here.
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