UNIVERSAL MENTAL HEALTH TRAINING FOR FRONTLINE PROFESSIONALS (UMHT)'s FEASIBILITY ANALYSIS

General information

The Universal Mental Health Training for Frontline Professionals (UMHT) is an educational program developed and piloted in Ukraine in 2021-2023 to bridge the mental health gap between Ukrainians’ support needs and the health system's answers. Frontline professionals were trained to interact, support and refer for the professional help people with mental health conditions.

The UMHT was developed in 2021 and piloted in 2021-2023 within the context of the Mental Health for Ukraine Project (MH4U), implemented in Ukraine by GFA Consulting Group GmbH (donor - Swiss Confederation). The University of Luxembourg, with the support of the European Commission through the MSCA4Ukraine fellowship scheme by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH) for premier investigator Viktoriia Gorbunova, is leading a full-scale efficacy study of the UMHT in 2023-2025. 

Pilot trial data available: https://zenodo.org/records/10410525

Data and file overview

To assess the demand, acceptability, adaptability and extendability of the UMHT as the focus areas of the programme’s feasibility were used statistics on the actual use of the program, as well as data from satisfaction and usability surveying of 144 program deliverers and 714 trained frontline professionals.

To assess programme demand, we measured the actual use of the program with statistics on the number of trainings conducted with donor support in terms of organisation and financing and independently on request of different organisations.

As program acceptability measurement was chosen, training content and delivery satisfaction by its trainers as deliverers and FLP as its recipients through satisfaction surveying. All audiences were asked to assess on a 5-grade scale whether training materials were structured and clear, whether the balance between theory and practice was kept, whether there were enough examples and explanations, whether answers to participants’ questions were full and clear, whether trainers where careful of sensitive topics and mindful of stigma and whether presentations and following material were high quality and perceptibility.

The same scale was applied for self-assessing the ToTs participants’ post-training boost of preparedness to lead UMHT in terms of knowledge, skills and general readiness: “My understanding of the topic of interactions with people with MH issues has increased”; “My skills to lead UMH trainings and supervisions was mastered; “My readiness to lead UMH trainings and supervisions has increased”. FLP assessed their with the questions: “My understanding of the topic of interactions with people with MH issues has increased”; “My skills to interact with people with MH issues was mastered; “My readiness to work with people with MH issues has increased.

Also, future trainers and FLP were asked to name knowledge and skills they would like to strengthen and give suggestions on changes in the training materials and process to improve it.

Additionally, data were taken from the accreditation assessment of UMHT trainers' knowledge and skills observed in the training delivery process. In particular were assessed subject knowledge, organisational skills, instrumental skills, motivational skills, and ethical skills.

The adaptability of the program was measured through its comparative usability by different groups of FLP, specifically with questions: “Did you work with people with mental conditions after the UMHT?”; “Did you use the knowledge and skills gained during the UMHT?”; “If yes, what knowledge and skills gained during the UMHT you were able to use?” The list of knowledge and skills consists of those needed on each step of the UMHT model and purposely targeted during the training: recognise MH condition, validate MH condition with a person / their caregivers, support a person, refer for professional help, and ensure the reference was successful.

Additional information, such as the content of supervision requests from the UMHT trainers, was driven from supervision reports. In general, there were six possible types of supervision: organisational supervision  (issues related to the organisation of the training process and supervision of training participants), content-related supervision (issues related to the need to expand/deepen knowledge about a specific disorder or other training topic), instrumental supervision (issues related to the need to practice specific skills to lead training), navigational supervision (issues related to the need for additional motivation of participants, management of difficult situations, conflict-solving), technical supervision (issues related to the use of digital applications during training and other technical aspects), motivational supervision (questions related to psychological readiness to lead training, burnout and general need for support).

The comparative usability for modules centred on MH disorders and newly developed modules centred on mental health crises (aggressive behaviour, self-harm behaviour, suicide & life-threatening behaviour, unusual & disorganised behaviour) was used for extendability measurement of the UMHT.

Sharing and accessing information

Information (raw anonymised data) is openly available through Zenodo. It is possible to use the information with research aims to evaluate UMHT or compare data with other similar programs. Our research team kindly asks to notify the contact person (Viktoriia Gorbunova) about any dataset usage.  

Methodological information

The aim of the present study was to assess the feasibility of the UMHT as a public mental health promotion&prevention intervention on the base of its demand as well as users’ satisfaction and programme potential to be adjustable for different groups of frontline professionals and to be open to modifications due to design and content features. Therefore, the study focuses on the relevance of the UMHT to social demand, its acceptability, adaptability and capacity for further development and modification.

The UMHT was disseminated by the Training of Trainers (ToT) approach, highlighted in the mhGAP Operation Guide (WHO, 2018). To assess the feasibility of the UMHT, we surveyed the satisfaction and usability of the programme, its trainers (mental health professionals trained to deliver the UMHT to different groups of frontline professionals), and frontline professionals (FLP) as programme recipients. Generally, the analysis used answers from 144 UMHT mental health professionals who intended to become UMHT trainers and 714 frontline professionals (social workers (203 persons), educators (152), police officers (122), workers of occupation centres (58), emergency responders (52), military volunteers (34), pharmacists (37), librarians and museum workers (29), priests and clerics (27)).

Data-specific information

Underlying data are available in the Excel file (UMHT_data_full set_ZENODO_v.2.xlsx), containing five pages. 

1. Page " Satisfaction". Contains the answers to questionaries completed by UMHT training participants after the training. 

2. Page "Feedback and suggestions UA". Contains the qualitative data, provided by UMHT training participants immediately after the training in Ukrainian language (original). 

3. Page "Feedback and suggestions EN". Contains the qualitative data, provided by UMHT training participants immediately after the training in English language (translation). 

4. Page " Usability". Contains the answers to questionaries completed by UMHT training participants the month before the training. 

5. Page " Supervision reports". Contains the data of assessment of the UMHT participants by UMHT trainers/supervisors.

Extended data are available in the PDF file (UMHT Feasibility Extended Data.pdf), containing 38 Tables with detailed statistics, calculated based on the Underlying Data, and in PDF file (UMHT surveys.pdf), containing surveys used in the study.