BACKGROUND:
Mental health conditions account of a large proportion of global disease burden, with a persisting large treatment gap a major global public health challenge, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Integration of mental health into primary health care is widely endorsed as a key strategy to reduce this gap. However, implementation and scale-up of such integrated mental health interventions in real-world settings is slow.

AIM:
To share methodological lessons and implementation strategies from South Africa, Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya as a catalyst for discussion on opportunities for achieving public mental health impact through scaling up integrated primary mental health care services in sub-Saharan Africa.

METHODS:
A panel discussion drawing on experiences and population impact of initiatives to scale up integrated primary mental health care in South Africa, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Kenya. The South African presentation will focus on the Mental health INTegration (MhINT) project for common mental health conditions along the care cascade in three sub-national provinces. The Nigerian, Ethiopian and Kenyan presentations will reflect on the contextualized use of the World Health Organization Mental Health Gap Action Programme Intervention Guide (mhGAP-IG) to scale-up integrated services at sub-national and national levels across diverse populations. Results and Conclusion The outcome of the panel will provide participants with cross-country learnings of key barriers and actions to the implementation of integrated primary mental health care services at scale so as to optimize population impact. A set of emerging recommendations for best practice in scaling up integrated mental health care within PHC systems in sub-Saharan Africa that can be applied in similar settings will be generated through discussion.