Implementing Evidence-Based Mental Health Care in Low-Resource Settings: A Focus on Safety Planning Procedures

Despite advances in global mental health evidence and policy recommendations, the uptake of evidence-based practices (EBP) in low- and middle-income countries has been slow. Lower resource settings have several challenges, such as limited trained personnel, lack of government resources set aside for mental health, poorly developed mental health systems, and inadequate child protection services. Given these inherent challenges, a possible barrier to implementation of EBP is how to handle safety risks such as suicide, intimate partner violence (IPV), and/or abuse. Safety issues are prevalent in populations with mental health problems and often over-looked and/or underreported. This article briefly reviews common safety issues such as suicide, IPV, and child abuse and proposes the use of certain implementation strategies which could be helpful in creating locally appropriate safety protocols. This article lays out steps and examples of how to create a safety protocol and describes and presents data on safety cases from three different studies. Discussion includes specific challenges and future directions, focusing on implementation.