Kohrt, Brandon A., Emily Mendenhall, and Peter J. Brown. 2016.“How Anthropological Theory and Methods Can Advance Global Mental Health.” Lancet Psychiatry, 3(May):396-397.
Mendenhall, Emily, Kristin Yarris and Brandon Kohrt. 2016.“Utilization of standardized mental health assessments in anthropological research: possibilities and pitfalls.” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 40(4):726-745.
In the past decade anthropologists working the boundary of culture, medicine, and psychiatry have drawn from ethnographic and epidemiological methods to interdigitate data and provide more depth in understanding critical health problems. But rarely do these studies incorporate psychiatric inventories with ethnographic analysis. This article shows how triangulation of research methods strengthens scholars’ ability (1) to draw conclusions from smaller data sets and facilitate comparisons of what suffering means across contexts; (2) to unpack the complexities of ethnographic and narrative data by way of interdigitating narratives with standardized evaluations of psychological distress; and (3) to enhance the translatability of narrative data to interventionists and to make anthropological research more accessible to policymakers. The crux of this argument is based on two discrete case studies, one community sample of Nicaraguan grandmothers in urban Nicaragua, and another clinic-based study of Mexican immigrant women in urban United States, which represent different populations, methodologies, and instruments. Yet, both authors critically examine narrative data and then use the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale to further unpack meaning of psychological suffering by analyzing symptomatology. Such integrative methodologies illustrate how incorporating results from standardized mental health assessments can corroborate meaning-making in anthropology while advancing anthropological contributions to mental health treatment and policy.
Mendenhall, Emily, Gitonga Isaiah, *Bernadette Nelson, Abednego Musau, Adam D. Koon, Lahra Smith, Victoria Mutiso, David Ndetei. 2016. “Nurses’ Perceptions of mental healthcare in primary-care settings in Kenya.” Global Public Health, 13(4):442-455.
Kenya maintains an extraordinary treatment gap for mental health services because the need for and availability of mental health services are extraordinarily misaligned. One way to narrow the treatment gap is task-sharing, where specialists rationally distribute tasks across the health system, with many responsibilities falling upon frontline health workers, including nurses. Yet, little is known about how nurses perceive task-sharing mental health services. This article investigates nurses’ perceptions of mental healthcare delivery within primary-care settings in Kenya. We conducted a cross-sectional study of 60 nurses from a public urban (n = 20), private urban (n = 20), and public rural (n = 20) hospitals. Nurses participated in a one-hour interview about their perceptions of mental healthcare delivery. Nurses viewed mental health services as a priority and believed integrating it into a basic package of primary care would protect it from competing health priorities, financial barriers, stigma, and social problems. Many nurses believed that integrating mental healthcare into primary care was acceptable and feasible, but low levels of knowledge of healthcare providers, especially in rural areas, and few specialists, would be barriers. These data underscore the need for task-sharing mental health services into existing primary healthcare in Kenya.
Mendenhall, Emily, *H. Stowe McMurry, Roopa Shivashankar, K.M. Venkat Narayan, Nikhil Tandon, Dorairaj Prabhakaran. 2016. “Normalizing Diabetes in Delhi: A Qualitative Study of Health and Healthcare.” Anthropology and Medicine, epub June 21.
The Type 2 diabetes epidemic in India poses challenges to the health system. Yet, little is known about how urban Indians view treatment and self-care. Such views are important within the pluralistic healthcare landscape of India, bringing together allopathic and non-allopathic (or traditional) paradigms and practices. We used in-depth qualitative interviews to examine how people living with diabetes in India selectively engage with allopathic and non-allopathic Indian care paradigms. We propose a ‘discourse marketplace’ model that demonstrates competing ways in which people frame diabetes care-seeking in India’s medical pluralism, which includes allopathic and traditional systems of care. Four major domains emerged from grounded theory analysis: 1) normalization of diabetes in social interactions; 2) stigma; 3) stress; and 4) decision-making with regard to diabetes treatment. We found that participants selectively engaged with aspects of allopathic and non-allopathic Indian illness paradigms to build personalized illness meanings and care plans that served psychological, physical, and social needs. Participants constructed illness narratives that emphasized the social-communal experience of diabetes and as a result, reported less stigma and stress due to diabetes. These data suggest that the pro-social construction of diabetes in India is both helpful and harmful for patients – it provides psychological comfort, but also lessens the impetus for prevention and self-care. Clarifying the social constructions of diabetes and chronic disease in India and other medically pluralistic contexts is a crucial first step to designing locally situated treatment schemes.
Koon, Adam, Lahra Smith, Victoria Mutiso, David Ndetei, and Emily Mendenhall. 2016. “Nurses’ perceptions of universal health coverage and its implications for the Kenyan health sector.” Critical Public Health, 27 (1), 28-38.
Universal health coverage, comprehensive access to affordable and quality health services, is a key component of the newly adopted 2015 Sustainable Development Goals. Prior to the UN resolution, several countries began incorporating elements of universal health coverage into their domestic policy arenas. In 2013, the newly elected President of Kenya announced initiatives aimed at moving towards universal health coverage, which have proven to be controversial. Little is known about how frontline workers, increasingly politically active and responsible for executing these mandates, view these changes. To understand more about how actors make sense of universal health coverage policies, we conducted an interpretive policy analysis using well-established methods from critical policy studies. This study utilized in-depth semi-structured interviews from a cross section of 60 nurses in three health facilities (public and private) in Kenya. Nurses were found to be largely unfamiliar with universal health coverage and interpreted it in myriad ways. One policy in particular, free maternal health care, was interpreted positively in theory and negatively in practice. Nurses often relied on symbolic language to express powerlessness in the wake of significant health systems reform. Study participants linked many of these frustrations to disorganization in the health sector as well as the changing political landscape in Kenya. These interpretations provide insight into charged policy positions held by frontline workers that threaten to interrupt service delivery and undermine the movement towards universal health coverage in Kenya.
Panda, Rajmohan, Swati Srivastava, Divya Persai, Emily Mendenhall, Monika Arora, and Manu Raj Mathur. 2016. “System level approaches for mainstreaming tobacco control into existing health programs in India: Perspectives from the field.” Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, 4(4):559-65.
Introduction: India is the second largest consumer of tobacco in the world, and varieties of both smoked and smokeless tobacco products are widely available. The national program for tobacco control is run like a vertical stand-alone program. There is a lack of understanding of existing opportunities and barriers within the health programs that influence the integration of tobacco control messages into them. The present formative research identifies such opportunities and barriers. Methods: We conducted a multi-step, mixed methodological study of primary care personnel and policy-makers in two Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. The primary purpose of our study was to investigate health worker and policy-maker perceptions on the integration of tobacco control intervention. We systematically collected data in three steps: In Step I, we conducted in-depth interviews (IDIs) and focus group discussions with primary care health personnel, Step II consists of a quantitative survey among health care providers (n = 1457) to test knowledge, attitudes and practices in tobacco control and Step III we conducted 75 IDIs with program heads and policy-makers to evaluate the relative congruence of their views on integration of the tobacco control program. Results: Majority of the health care providers recognized tobacco use as a major health problem. There was a general consensus for the need of training for effective dissemination of information from health care providers to patients. Almost 92% of the respondents opined that integration of tobacco control with other health programs will be highly effective to downscale the tobacco epidemic. Conclusions: Our findings suggest the need for integration of tobacco control program into existing health programs. Integration of tobacco control strategies into the health care system within primary and secondary care will be more effective and counseling for tobacco cessation should be available for population at large.