Evidence-Based Guidelines for Mental, Neurological, and Substance Use Disorders in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Summary of WHO Recommendations

PLoS Med. 2011 November; 8(11): e1001122.
Published online 2011 November 15. doi:  10.1371/journal.pmed.1001122
PMCID: PMC3217030
Evidence-Based Guidelines for Mental, Neurological, and Substance Use Disorders in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Summary of WHO Recommendations

Tarun Dua,1 Corrado Barbui,2 Nicolas Clark,1 Alexandra Fleischmann,1 Vladimir Poznyak,1 Mark van Ommeren,1 M. Taghi Yasamy,1 Jose Luis Ayuso-Mateos,3 Gretchen L. Birbeck,4 Colin Drummond,5 Melvyn Freeman,6 Panteleimon Giannakopoulos,7 Itzhak Levav,8 Isidore S. Obot,9 Olayinka Omigbodun,10 Vikram Patel,11 Michael Phillips,12 Martin Prince,13 Afarin Rahimi-Movaghar,14 Atif Rahman,15 Josemir W. Sander,16 John B. Saunders,17 Chiara Servili,18 Thara Rangaswamy,19 Jürgen Unützer,20 Peter Ventevogel,21 Lakshmi Vijayakumar,22 Graham Thornicroft,23 and Shekhar Saxena1,*¶

Summary Points

The treatment gap for mental, neurological, and substance use (MNS) disorders is more than 75% in many low- and middle-income countries.
In order to reduce the gap, the World Health Organization (WHO) has developed a model intervention guide within its Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP).
The model intervention guide provides evidence-based recommendations developed with the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) methodology.
This article presents the management recommendations for MNS disorders, with a link to the World Health Organization website where all the background material may be accessed.
To our knowledge, this is a first exercise involving such an extensive and systematic evaluation of evidence in this area.

acesse:  pmed.1001122.pdf