A new mental health policy for South Africa.

South Africa’s COVID-19 Alcohol Sales Ban: The Potential for Better Policy-Making

Mental health care user participation in mental health policy development and implementation in South Africa.

This paper describes current support for mental health care user participation in policy development and implementation in South Africa and suggests strategies for improving participation. The World Health Organization (WHO) Mental Health Policy Checklist and WHO Mental Health Legislation Checklist were completed. Between August 2006 and August 2009 96 semi-structured interviews with national, ...

Pharmacovigilance in India, Uganda and South Africa with Reference to WHO’s Minimum Requirements

Background Pharmacovigilance (PV) data are crucial for ensuring safety and effectiveness of medicines after drugs have been granted marketing approval. This paper describes the PV systems of India, Uganda and South Africa based on literature and Key Informant (KI) interviews and compares them with the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) minimum PV requirements for a Functional National PV Syste...

Barriers to the participation of people with psychosocial disability in mental health policy development in South Africa: a qualitative study of perspectives of policy makers, professionals, religious leaders and academics

BACKGROUND This paper outlines stakeholder views on environmental barriers that prevent people who live with psychosocial disability from participating in mental health policy development in South Africa. METHOD Fifty-six semi-structured interviews with national, provincial and local South African mental health stakeholders were conducted between August 2006 and August 2009. Respondents inclu...

Health system governance to support integrated mental health care in South Africa: challenges and opportunities

BACKGROUND While South Africa has a new policy framework supporting the integration of mental health care into primary health care, this is not sufficient to ensure transformation of the health care system towards integrated primary mental health care. Health systems strengthening is needed, incorporating, inter alia, capacity building and resource inputs, as well as good governance for ensurin...