This module seeks to develop students with the skills and knowledge to design and evaluate mental health programmes. The focus of the module is on methods to design and evaluate mental health programmes, and follows the MRC framework for developing and evaluating complex interventions. Key concepts such as formative research, pilot studies and definitive evaluations are taught in lectures, and these are consolidated by case studies and practical group exercises.

The overall module aim is to attract and work with students who are committed to integrating packages of care for mental disorders into routine platforms of care. For students taking the MSc in Global Mental health, this module will provide an excellent foundation for the “Theory to Practice in Global Mental Health” module (run in term 3), as well as providing an excellent grounding in intervention development and evaluation for other students.

Intended learning outcomes

Upon successful completion of the module, a student will be able to: 

• Describe and critically assess the integration of packages of care for mental disorders into different platforms of care (e.g. into primary care, maternal healthcare or into platforms of care for other communicable and non-communicable diseases such as HIV or diabetes) to create mental health programmes, with a focus on low resource settings;
• Be fluent in the application of a framework to evaluate the effectiveness of delivering a mental health programme;
• Understand how to integrate a package of care for a specific mental disorder into a platform of healthcare delivery, provide an accompanying formative research plan and evaluation strategy, with a supporting rationale based upon a synthesis of the knowledge gained from the module overall and provide a critical evaluation of the strengths and limitations of the approach.

Session Content

The module is expected to cover the following topics: 

Intended learning outcomes 1 

• Principles of integrating packages of care for mental disorders into platforms of care.
• Resources (human, financial and other) are required for the delivery of mental health programmes.

Intended learning outcomes 2 & 3 

• A series of case studies illustrating mental health programmes which integrate packages of care for mental disorders into platforms of care (e.g. HIV, maternal health care, NCD care or humanitarian contexts).
• Formative research and piloting to design a mental health programme by integrating a package of care for a mental disorder into a platform of healthcare delivery.
• Evaluation of mental health programmes including effectiveness and process evaluations.

Mode of delivery

This module is delivered predominantly face-to-face. Where specific teaching methods (lectures, seminars, discussion groups) are noted in this module specification these will be delivered by predominantly face-to-face sessions. There will be a combination of live and interactive activities (synchronous learning) as well as self-directed study (asynchronous learning).

Assessment

The assessment for this module has been designed to measure student learning against the module's intended learning outcomes (ILOs) as listed above. The grade for summative assessment(s) only will go towards the overall award GPA. 

For their summative assessment, students will be given a short answer question assessment based on the content of the Module. The assessment for this module will be online (submission via Moodle).

Credits

• CATS: 15
• ECTS: 7.5

Module specification

For full information regarding this module please see the module specification.

Please note: information based on the 2024-25 module specification subject to change for 2025-26 entry.