ArticleGlobal mental health (Cambridge, England)2020
Expressions of psychological distress in Sierra Leone: implications for community-based prevention and response.
Article in Global mental health (Cambridge, England), 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Policy and practice implications of contextual understanding of - and tools to address - mental health and psychosocial support needs in Sierra Leone.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- The cultural adaptation of the Friendship Bench Intervention to address perinatal psychological distress in Sierra Leone: an application of the ADAPT-ITT framework and the Ecological Validity Model.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Development of a cognitive behavioral therapy intervention among pregnant women in Pujehun District, Sierra Leone.Cogent mental health · 2025Article
- The development of a contextually appropriate measure of psychological distress in Sierra Leone.BMC psychology · 2021Article
- Factors contributing to emotional distress in Sierra Leone: a socio-ecological analysis.International journal of mental health systems · 2021Article
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6 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundOver recent decades there has been considerable mental health research in Sierra Leone but little on local conceptualisations of mental health conditions. Understanding these is crucial both for identifying the experienced needs of the population and utilising relevant community-based resources to address them. This study took a grounded approach to identify the ways in which adults in Sierra Leone express psychological distress.
methodsRapid ethnographic methods deployed included 75 case study interviews with community members, 12 key informant (KI) pile sorts and 55 KI interviews. Thematic analysis of data was supported by frequency analysis and multi-dimensional scaling.
resultsThirty signs of distress were identified. The only consistent 'syndrome' identified with respect to these was a general concept of
conclusionsAnalysis supports calls to view mental health problems as a 'continuum of distress' rather than as discrete categories. This framing is coherent with opportunities for prevention and response in Sierra Leone which do not focus primarily on formal healthcare service providers but rather involve a range of community-based actors. It also enables attention to be paid to the identification of milder signs of distress with a view to early response and prevention of more severe mental health problems.
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