A Resident-Based Telepsychiatry Supervision Pilot Program in Liberia

Abstract

Worldwide, attention to mental disorders lags far behind the staggering morbidity attributed to them. In low-resource settings, the majority of people with serious mental illness go untreated, and a major reason for this treatment gap is the worldwide shortage of mental health professionals. In Liberia, this shortfall has been addressed by training and licensing nurses, midwives, and physician assistants as mental health clinicians (MHCs) via an intensive 6-month training program. This column describes a pilot program utilizing senior American psychiatry residents to provide remote posttraining supervision to the MHCs via live teleconferencing.