Associated organisationsMinistry of Health (Malawi) · Queen Margaret University · University of Edinburgh · University of MalawiEurope PMC affiliations are not treated as award recipients or mapped locations.
Funding£3.0M
PeriodApr 2022 — Mar 2027
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
People with psychosis in Malawi currently have no reliable way to get diagnosed or treated. The PROMISE project will work with patients, caregivers, and local health leaders to build detection systems and care pathways that fit the country’s existing health services. This matters because psychosis is treatable, yet in Malawi—as in many low- and middle-income countries—most people with the condition remain undiagnosed and untreated. Stigma, lack of awareness, and a severe shortage of mental health professionals mean that families often manage alone, without support. The project aims to close that gap by developing low-cost, simple interventions that can be delivered by non-specialist health workers. If successful, the research could give the Malawian Ministry of Health a proven, cost-effective model to scale up nationwide within five years. The materials and training tools developed here could then be adapted for other African countries and beyond. The co-production approach—designing services *with* the people who use them—could also improve severe mental illness care in well-resourced health systems around the world.
View original technical description
Our vision is to work with PWLE, caregivers, local community and health leaders to build on existing services and initiatives, to develop acceptable and sustainable psychosis detection systems and management pathways, to improve psychosis awareness and the health and lives of people with psychosis in Malawi within 5 years. The study team has strong links with Ministry of Health (MoH) and other health providers in Malawi, and we are focussed on long-term implementation and impact. We recognise the importance of having embedded, robust implementation and evaluation of the interventions and programme as a whole to convince policy makers to scale up. We will therefore evaluate effectiveness and cost-effectiveness with the aim of demonstrating the value of this approach to the MoH, to encourage longer term adoption across Malawi. The psychosis awareness, diagnosis and therapeutic materials that we develop will contribute to facilitating a roll-out of similar models of care in other Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) in Africa and beyond. The principles of co-production and models of low-cost simple intervention could also be beneficially adapted to improve mental health services for those with severe mental illness in many well-resourced services and High-Income countries (HICs) around the world.
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