Mental Health Integration in Primary Care Training Course

Duration 5 days 10 modules · 33 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends Primary Care Managers, Mental Health Programme Managers and others
Fee from USD 1,100 KSh 95,000 for Kenyan organisations
Where 52 cities + online See dates by city
Next start 16 Nov 2026 Course code SD-HSM-046

Before you join: Participants should have experience working in primary care, community health, mental health programmes, health service management or quality improvement.

Dates & prices

Two start dates a month in every city, and live online on weekdays or weekends. Fees are per participant; classroom fees include tuition, materials, lunch and refreshments, and the certificate.

Suggest a date or city

Showing the next six months. Later dates, other cities and private deliveries for your team are available on request.

Course overview

Primary care teams are often the first point of contact for people experiencing depression, anxiety, harmful substance use, psychosis, trauma-related distress or perinatal mental health concerns. Yet many services lack clear pathways, defined team roles, reliable screening processes, medication follow-up arrangements and referral relationships. The result can be missed need, avoidable crisis presentations, fragmented care and poor continuity for people with long-term mental and physical health conditions.

This course equips participants to design and manage practical mental health integration within primary care systems. Participants examine service models, including collaborative care, stepped care and task-sharing; select screening and assessment approaches; establish clinical pathways; define supervision and referral arrangements; and use routine data to improve quality. The course addresses governance, financing, workforce planning, stigma reduction, medicines management, safeguarding and community linkages. Cases reflect common implementation settings, including public clinics, employer health services, humanitarian programmes and district health systems.

Teaching combines focused briefings with facilitated case analysis, team-based service design, pathway mapping, role-played case review meetings and implementation planning. Participants work with realistic service data and clinical scenarios while remaining focused on system design rather than specialist psychiatric diagnosis. Each participant leaves with a mental health integration implementation pack containing a service model, pathway map, workforce plan, indicator set, risk register and 90-day action plan.

The course is suited to managers and technical staff responsible for primary care delivery, mental health programmes, quality improvement, commissioning and health service reform. It is particularly useful where an organisation needs to move from isolated mental health projects to defined, monitored and accountable primary care provision.

What you will be able to do

  • Assess primary care readiness using a structured mental health integration assessment
  • Design collaborative care and stepped-care service models for defined populations
  • Map screening, assessment, treatment, referral and follow-up pathways
  • Specify task-sharing roles, supervision arrangements and competency requirements
  • Select PHQ-9, GAD-7 and SBIRT workflows for routine primary care use
  • Develop mental health quality indicators, dashboards and review cycles
  • Prepare governance, safeguarding and medicines-management controls for integrated services
  • Produce a 90-day implementation plan with responsibilities, milestones and risks

Benefits of attending

For you

  • Build credible mental health integration proposals for primary care leadership
  • Lead pathway redesign discussions between primary care and specialist services
  • Use screening and service data to identify breakdowns in continuity
  • Define safe task-sharing boundaries for non-specialist health workers
  • Create an evidence-informed implementation plan for a local service

For your organisation

  • Create clearer routes from identification through treatment, referral and follow-up
  • Reduce fragmented handovers between primary care, specialists and community providers
  • Improve detection and monitoring of common mental health conditions
  • Establish measurable accountability for integrated mental health service performance
  • Target workforce, medicines and supervision resources against documented service gaps

Course modules

10 modules over 5 days

Participants can define the case for integration and select an appropriate primary care service model.

  • Mental health treatment gaps analysed through access, quality and continuity failures
  • WHO mhGAP principles for non-specialist mental health service delivery
  • Collaborative care model roles, registry functions and psychiatric consultation
  • Stepped-care design matched to symptom severity and functional impairment
  • Task-sharing boundaries between community workers, nurses, physicians and specialists
  • Equity analysis covering poverty, gender, age, disability and displacement

Participants can assess local need, service capacity and implementation readiness using structured evidence.

  • Catchment population segmentation using age, risk, diagnosis and service-use data
  • Burden estimation from prevalence studies, clinic records and community consultations
  • Readiness assessment covering workforce, medicines, space, data and governance
  • Patient journey mapping from first presentation through sustained recovery support
  • Stakeholder analysis identifying decision-makers, champions, referrers and community partners
  • Gap prioritisation using impact, feasibility, equity and implementation risk criteria

Participants can design safe screening and assessment workflows for common mental health presentations.

  • PHQ-9 workflow covering administration, scoring, review and follow-up thresholds
  • GAD-7 use within routine consultations and chronic disease reviews
  • SBIRT approach for alcohol and substance-use identification and brief intervention
  • Suicide risk assessment triggers, immediate actions and escalation pathways
  • Diagnostic decision support distinguishing distress, disorder, physical illness and medication effects
  • Informed consent procedures for screening, documentation and information sharing

Participants can map coordinated pathways from identification to recovery-oriented follow-up.

  • Pathway mapping across screening, assessment, intervention, referral and follow-up
  • Referral criteria for specialist psychiatry, psychology, emergency and social services
  • Closed-loop referral processes confirming attendance, feedback and responsibility transfer
  • Care plans linking mental health goals with physical health management
  • Relapse prevention plans specifying warning signs, contacts and review schedules
  • Peer support and community resources incorporated into continuity arrangements

Participants can define roles, competencies and supervision structures for task-shared care.

  • Role matrices assigning assessment, treatment, education, referral and monitoring responsibilities
  • Competency frameworks for general practitioners, nurses and community health workers
  • Clinical supervision models using scheduled review, case discussion and observation
  • Caseload stratification rules for intensity, escalation and specialist review
  • Protected time calculations for consultations, documentation, supervision and coordination
  • Burnout prevention measures addressing workload, emotional demands and team support

Participants can organise evidence-informed treatment packages within primary care scope and safeguards.

  • Brief psychological interventions suitable for trained non-specialist primary care staff
  • Antidepressant prescribing protocols covering indication, review, adherence and discontinuation
  • Essential medicines planning using formulary selection, stock monitoring and reorder points
  • Medication safety checks for interactions, pregnancy, comorbidity and adverse effects
  • Psychoeducation scripts addressing symptoms, self-management, stigma and family involvement
  • Social prescribing links connecting patients with housing, livelihood and protection services

Participants can establish governance controls that protect patient rights and clinical safety.

  • Clinical governance structures defining accountability, incident review and escalation authority
  • Mental health rights principles applied to consent, dignity and least-restrictive care
  • Safeguarding protocols for abuse, neglect, violence and vulnerable adults
  • Confidentiality rules for records, family involvement and interagency communication
  • Crisis response arrangements for suicide risk, acute psychosis and intoxication
  • Stigma reduction actions embedded within patient communications and staff procedures

Participants can specify indicators and improvement routines for integrated mental health services.

  • Minimum dataset defining screening, diagnosis, treatment, outcome and follow-up fields
  • Process indicators measuring screening coverage, referral completion and review timeliness
  • Outcome measures using symptom change, functioning and patient-reported experience
  • Equity disaggregation by sex, age, location, disability and socioeconomic status
  • Run charts used to detect variation after pathway or workflow changes
  • Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles structured around measurable service improvement aims

Participants can align resources, contracts and partnerships with an integrated service model.

  • Cost categories covering staff, supervision, medicines, data and community support
  • Budget scenarios comparing phased implementation, targeted pilots and full coverage
  • Commissioning specifications defining access standards, pathway obligations and reporting requirements
  • Provider payment incentives supporting follow-up, continuity and outcome measurement
  • Memoranda of understanding clarifying referral responsibilities and information-sharing protocols
  • Partnership governance with social services, schools, employers and civil society

Participants can prepare a phased implementation plan for introducing or strengthening integrated care.

  • Theory of change linking inputs, activities, service outputs and patient outcomes
  • Phased rollout plan sequencing preparation, pilot testing, adaptation and expansion
  • RACI matrix assigning accountable owners for critical implementation activities
  • Risk register covering workforce, medicines, data, stigma and referral capacity
  • Communication plan tailored for staff, patients, communities and senior leaders
  • Ninety-day action plan with milestones, indicators, decisions and review dates

Exercises and examples are adapted to each cohort's sectors and roles.

What you take back to work

  1. Primary care mental health readiness assessment template
  2. Integrated mental health clinical pathway map
  3. Task-sharing role and supervision matrix
  4. Mental health service indicator dashboard
  5. Implementation risk register
  6. Ninety-day integration action plan

Who should attend

  • Primary Care Managers — responsible for service performance, staffing and patient flow
  • Mental Health Programme Managers — translating policy commitments into operational service models
  • District Health Managers — coordinating referral networks, supervision and resource allocation
  • Clinical Leads — defining safe assessment, treatment and follow-up arrangements
  • Quality Improvement Managers — measuring care processes, outcomes and service gaps
  • Health Commissioners — specifying integrated mental health requirements in provider contracts

Skills and tools covered

Integrated care designClinical pathway mappingTask-sharing managementMental health measurementQuality improvementImplementation planning

Tools and standards

WHO mhGAP Intervention Guide, PHQ-9, GAD-7, SBIRT

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor briefings to introduce service models, clinical governance concepts and implementation methods. Participants analyse primary care cases, map patient journeys, review anonymised service data and compare design choices in small groups. Simulations focus on multidisciplinary case review, referral coordination and performance review meetings. Trainers guide participants through adapting templates to their own service context. The final sessions concentrate on implementation planning, stakeholder alignment, risk management and early measurement priorities.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have experience working in primary care, community health, mental health programmes, health service management or quality improvement. Familiarity with routine health information systems, referral processes and basic clinical service terminology is helpful. Participants should understand how their organisation currently delivers, commissions or refers mental health care. This is not a clinical psychotherapy or psychiatric diagnosis course. No prior specialist mental health qualification, statistical software expertise, coding knowledge or experience using a particular electronic health record is required.

A typical training day

08:30 – 10:30First session
10:30 – 10:45Refreshment break
10:45 – 12:30Second session
12:30 – 13:30Lunch and networking
13:30 – 15:00Third session
15:00 – 15:15Refreshment break
15:15 – 16:30Workshop and daily review

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in East Africa Time, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

  • Instruction by a practitioner facilitator
  • Full course workbook and materials
  • Exercise files, templates and case studies
  • Refreshments and lunch on classroom deliveries
  • Certificate of completion
  • Post-course application plan

Frequently asked questions

Participants need practical familiarity with primary care, community health, mental health programmes or health service management. Specialist psychiatric training is not required, and the course does not assume experience with a particular electronic health record.

Participants should bring any available service maps, referral protocols, staffing structures, routine data reports or mental health policy documents. These materials are useful for adapting the course templates, but they are not mandatory.

The course is designed for managers, clinical leads, programme staff, commissioners and quality improvement professionals. It is most useful for people with responsibility for designing, managing or improving primary care services.

This course focuses on service design, delivery systems, workforce arrangements, governance and measurement. It does not train participants to provide psychotherapy or make specialist psychiatric diagnoses.

Participants can use the readiness assessment, pathway map, role matrix and indicator dashboard to review an existing service or plan a new one. The 90-day action plan provides a practical starting point for discussions with clinical, operational and funding stakeholders.

The five days provide about 32.5 contact hours, delivered from 08:30 to 16:30 each day. Time is allocated across ten modules covering service models, pathways, workforce, governance, measurement, financing and implementation planning.

Questions about this course?

Ask about dates, fees, group bookings or running it for your team. Our training team replies by email.

Ask on WhatsApp info@skillsetdevelopment.com

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