Purpose

The Scottish Malawi Mental Health Partnership (SMMHEP) provides psychiatric training and teaching to Malawian medical professionals and students. Our ethos is to respond to local needs as identified by our Malawian colleagues.

Mental health provision in the country lags a decade or more behind that of it's neighbouring states; although Malawi has a population of around 18 million, there are only 2 Malawian consultant psychiatrists practicing in the public health system in the country. Mental health patients are largely cared for by a small number of Clinical Officers, who have a BSc in medicine and specialist training in psychiatry, or by psychiatric nurses. 

Working together with Malawian medics and institutions since 2006, SMMHEP's aim is to train and support doctors locally so that Malawi has a sustainable level of skilled mental health professionals, thereby making the training role of SMMHEP obsolete.  

Roles

  • Delivery of the psychiatry rotation to the Year 4 medical students at Kumuzu University of Health Sciences four times a year alongside the Head of Department and local psychiatry trainees.
  • Support and supervision of postgraduate psychiatric training.
  • Support for ECT equipment and training.

Currently we

  • Train more than a hundred and fifty medical students a year.
  • Support the training of postgraduate trainee psychiatrists.
  • Work with Malawian psychiatrists and colleagues in Zambia to deliver and support a programme of Quality Improvement.

Evolution of SMMHEP

SMMHEP was born out of a conversation between Felix Kauye (Malawi’s only consultant psychiatrist at the time), Rob Stewart and other colleagues, lamenting the difficulties of training Malawian doctors in mental health.

Since 2006, SMMHEP has:

  • Designed and established undergraduate and postgraduate mental health teaching programmes at the Kumuzu University of Health Sciences in Blantyre.
  • Trained more than eight hundred undergraduate students.
  • Taught staff at Zomba Mental Hospital in the management of acute behavioural disturbance and the safe administration of electroconvulsive therapy.
  • Completed a three-year project, training primary healthcare workers in five districts.
  • Supported the first three Malawian postgraduate psychiatry trainees to complete their training.
  • Co-produced The Malawian Quick Guide to Mental Health, published in June 2020.
  • Developed e-learning resources for medical students, postgraduate psychiatry trainees, clinical officers and psychiatric nurses.
  • Supported the on-going delivery of undergraduate and postgraduate psychiatric education through the Covid-19 pandemic through adaptation to remote learning
  • Supported risk assessment training for Malawian colleagues in collaboration with the Blair Unit, Cornhill Hospital, Aberdeen