One in eight people live with mental, neurological or substance use (MNS) conditions but most do not receive mental health care, partly because of a shortage of mental health professionals. While increasing the number of specialists is important, we also need to ensure that general health-care providers, like primary health-care (PHC) doctors and nurses, are well-equipped to support people with MNS conditions. These professionals are often the first point of contact for those in need, yet many lack thorough training in MNS care.
To bridge this gap, WHO has developed Educating medical and nursing students to provide mental health, neurological and substance use care: a practical guide for pre-service education.
A competency-based approach
At the heart of the new guide are 12 core competencies that all medical and nursing students should develop before they graduate. These competencies integrate essential attitudes, skills and knowledge needed to provide quality MNS care.
The guide outlines practical activities and considerations for integrating these competencies into undergraduate medical and nursing curricula. It covers, among other things, advocating for enhanced curricula, setting new learning objectives, rethinking teaching methods, and evaluating effectiveness of curriculum changes.
A collaborative effort
Creating this guide was a global collaborative effort. It involved input from a wide range of stakeholders around the world, including people with lived experience, students, educators, university administrators and professional associations such as the International Council of Nurses, the World Psychiatric Association and the World Federation of Medical Education.
Collaborative workshops held in Geneva (2022) and Shanghai (2024) played a key part in shaping the guide and planning its dissemination.
Pre-service education in mental brain and behavioral health: scaling up implementation
and dissemination workshop in Shanghai, China, 13 – 14 March 2024
A flexible tool
The guide can be used by universities, educators and workforce planners to enhance existing curricula or develop new ones, or to strengthen accreditation standards and quality improvement initiatives.
What makes this guide so valuable is its adaptability to different contexts and resource settings. It does not provide a one-size-fits-all solution but rather a flexible framework that can be tailored to meet specific needs of different educational institutions and health-care systems. Even small changes can help medical and nursing students develop the competencies they need to provide more effective MNS care.
By serving to strengthen pre-service education in MNS care, we hope this guide will ultimately help improve the extent and quality of care for people with MNS conditions globally.
