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This paper aims to describe Caribbean traditional medicine and to consider whether and how it could be integrated into health systems in Canada.

This paper employs a literature review and synthesis.

Caribbean traditional healing takes a variety of forms reflecting the diversity of histories of the people of the Caribbean. A number of arguments including quality, equity, cost, and social climate will be important factors in facilitating or hindering the expansion of these complementary therapies. However, linking an expansion of therapies to other policy imperatives such as developing stronger communities and expansion of trade may make success more likely.

This is a narrative and document review. It is an argument which aims to produce discussion rather than empirical research.

Taking a discursive narrative approach to difficult policy issues may help in considering strategies for promoting change.

This is the first study which has attempted to consider traditional Caribbean medicine in the Canadian context. It is also the first to consider the strategies for convincing health systems to adopt this form of complementary medicine.

The aim of this paper is to review the history of mental health service improvement in Kenya, to discuss current provision of services, challenges to the provision of services and future needs for services.

The paper takes the form of a literature review.

Mental health care in Kenya has been a progressing field, though the momentum of progress has been less than desired. The reasons for this are complex including a lack of evidence of the size of the mental health burden which has undermined the political will to focus scarce resources in this area, lack of human resources, models of prevention, and robust mental health legislation. Traditional healers have a significant place in mental health care, these plus efforts to increase training on mental health, task shifting for other clinicians and also prevention may be important steps in improving access to care.

The review highlights how much remains to be done to improve mental health services in Kenya. It demonstrates the need for good epidemiological and intervention data to support a multi‐level approach, involving government, non‐governmental organizations, communities, families, affected individuals and other stakeholders. Prevention and treatment strategies should be streamlined and emphasis put on stigma reduction as well as provision of accessible, acceptable, sustainable and affordable care.

A review of the literature is useful to highlight what is known but also what information is missing and is needed to go forward.

This is the first system level historical review of the development of mental health services in Kenya. It offers a model for investigation that may be useful for others.

The paper's aim is to determine whether the SAFE (acculturative stress), PHQ‐9 (depressive symptoms) and MSPSS (individual social resources) scales are considered acceptable measures to be used in the Spanish‐speaking Latin American immigrant population in Toronto.

The PHQ9, MSPSS and SAFE were completed by a group of ten Spanish‐speaking Latin Americans recruited through an organization that offers services to immigrants in Toronto. The need for clarification of questions was noted as well as the comments that respondents made to the process.

Participants felt comfortable responding the questionnaire. There was little duplication when the three scales were used together. The average time to complete the survey was 21 minutes.

There has been no community based quantitative study of mental health in the Spanish‐speaking community in Toronto that has used the SAFE (acculturative stress), PHQ‐9 (depressive symptoms) and MSPSS (individual social resources) scales. This pilot study tested the suitability of these scales with this population. The PHQ9, SAFE and MSPSS are acceptable scales to be used in surveys in the Spanish‐speaking Latin American population in Toronto.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the usefulness of the social entrepreneurship (SE) framework in highlighting effective models of service development and practice in mental health equity.

Using a rigorous SE search process and a multiple case study design, core themes underlying the effectiveness of five services in Toronto, Canada for transgender, Aboriginal, immigrant, refugee, and homeless populations were determined.

It was found that the SE construct is highly applicable in the context of services addressing mental health inequities. In the analysis five core themes emerged that characterized the development of these organizations: the personal investment of leaders within a social justice framework; a very active period of clarifying values and mission, engaging partners, and establishing structure; applying a highly innovative approach; maintaining focus, keeping current, and exceeding expectations; and acting more as a service working from within a community than a service for a community.

These findings may have utility as a guide for individuals early in their trajectories of SE in the area of mental health equity and as a tool that can be used by decision maker “champions” to better identify and support SE endeavours.

In a context characterized by increasing attention given to models of SE in health equity, this study is the first to directly examine applicability to mental health equity.

Substance use is among the risk factors associated with both HIV/AIDS and non communicable diseases (NCDs). The aim of this paper is to describe the development of the medication assisted therapy (MAT) in the treatment of substance use disorders and opportunities for further interventions in Tanzania.

A review of MAT pilot project documentation, existing published and grey literature on substance misuse in Tanzania was used to describe the scope of this paper. MAT as a program focuses on the treatment of opiod dependent individuals using methadone in a national hospital in Tanzania. It is delivered by a team of trained interprofessionals coordinating with community partners.

The findings indicate an uptake of pharmacotherapy in the treatment of substance use disorders as an adjunct to traditional counseling approaches in low resource settings. Program acceptability and reach within a short period of time by the opiod dependent individuals is shown.

National buy‐in is critical for developments of new interventions. Given adequate resources, it is feasible to integrate MAT for the treatment of substance use disorders within health care systems in poor resource settings. To ensure the success of the program, sustainable efforts and scaling up to include alcohol and tobacco dependence treatment is crucial. The local capacity building is required including a need for designing appropriate policies to address alcohol and tobacco use in Tanzania.

The intervention is the only one in sub‐Saharan Africa. MAT may serve as a practice model for other countries in the region.

The paper's aim is to review how relevant the World Health Organisation's Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) initiative is to mental health care in non‐Western societies.

The paper provides a review of the programme and its relevance to mental health care by drawing on available literature and evidence.

mhGAP promotes the idea that mental health problems exist as problems within individuals, that they represent a substantial, though largely hidden, proportion of the world's overall disease burden, and that mental health services need scaling up across the globe to improve outcomes. However, mental health outcomes do not appear any better in those countries with the most developed services and the initiative does not seem to properly engage an evidence base that is at odds with the direction of travel the initiative recommends.

The paper explores these contradictions and argues that, whether intentional or not, mhGAP reflects and is part of the global neo‐liberal economic system and functions largely to expand the market for a particularly Western approach to understanding mental distress.

The aim of this paper is to review strategies implemented to improve access to mental health care in Jamaica.

The paper is a review of peer‐reviewed articles, official documents, service data and the WHO AIMS data.

Despite limited resources, Jamaica was able to shift from institutional care to community care by implementing the appropriate policy framework, building on primary care services, providing mental health beds at the community level, the training of specialized community mental health nurses (mental health officers) and improving access to psychotropic drugs. As a result, the country has developed a more accessible mental health service; the number of patients treated in the community has doubled over the past decade and 67 percent of inpatients are now treated outside of the mental hospital and there has been a reduction in the population of the mental hospital.

The paper illustrates the approach that serves as a model for mental health services in resource‐limited countries.

This chapter provides information on the specific programming needs of victims of torture pursuing higher education, and policy and practice guidelines which will support them in that pursuit. This is a community-based participatory action research project that brought together partners who had educational, research, practical, and real-life expertise in working with marginalized groups on this complex issue, with each partner playing an essential and a vital role in the research. A partnership between George Brown College, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, the Wellesley Institute, and the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture established this community-based participatory action research project. The project established innovative outreach for people seeking to integrate into Canadian society through education following experiences of torture and war as a means to aid in the meaningful integration of survivors into Canadian society. This work is scalable to other settings (e.g., universities and colleges across Canada) and groups with experiences of marginalization (e.g., Aboriginals, visible minorities, etc.).

Since 2002, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Ontario, Canada, has been working closely with partners in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) to implement mental health capacity‐building focused on primary health care. From an equity perspective, this article seeks to critically analyze the process and key results of this capacity‐building effort and to identify various implications for the future.

This analysis of capacity‐building approaches is based on a critical review of existing documents such as needs assessments and evaluation reports, as well as reflective discussion. Previous health equity literature is used as a framework for analysis.

More than 1,000 professionals have been engaged in various kinds of training in Chile, Peru, Brazil, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Trinidad and Tobago. These capacity‐building initiatives have had an impact on primary health care from both an equity and systems perspective because participants were engaged at all stages of the process and implementation lessons incorporated into the final efforts. Stigma was also reduced through the collaborations.

Using concrete examples of capacity‐building in mental primary healthcare in LAC, as well as evidence gathered from the literature, this article demonstrates how primary healthcare can play a strong role in addressing health equity and human rights protection for people with mental health and/or substance abuse problems.