The STREAM (Scalable TRansdiagnostic Early Assessment of Mental Health) study
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Date
2021-10-18
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Kamuzu University of Health Sciences
Abstract
Cross sectional study design with a qualitative component to study.
Problem To Be Studied
It is estimated that a staggering 95% (50.2 million) of children with developmental
disabilities reside in low to middle income countries (LMICs). Due to the scarcity of highly skilled professionals and the use of time-intensive, specialist-dependent, proprietary tools for assessment in these settings, it is very difficult to detect mental health problems in young children. This ‘detection gap’ poses the biggest challenge to developing and implementing effective interventions in early childhood, which is when brains are maximally plastic and responsive to changes. Neurodevelopmental assessments tool that can be administered by non-specialist workers (NSW) and which are applicable across diverse cultural settings would greatly help bridge the detection gap in child mental health.
Objectives
- Broad: To develop and test a platform for Scalable Transdiagnostic Assessment of
Mental Health (STREAM) in young children.
- Aim 1: To develop a scalable mobile platform to map the population distribution of
scores in key neurodevelopmental domains relevant to mental health in 0-6-year-old
children in two diverse low-resource settings (India and Malawi).
- Aim 2: To test the acceptability, feasibility, reliability, validity, and sensitivity of this
transdiagnostic platform in identifying the presence of any neurodevelopmental
disorder as well as clinical needs of these children through an assessment of their level
of functioning based on the World Health Organization (WHO) International
Classification of Functioning (ICF) framework.
Description
Keywords
Mental Health