ONMedU employees actively participate in the program “Mental Health Awareness Month in Ukraine”

As part of the “Mental Health Awareness Month in Ukraine”, on May 14, the head of the Department of Psychiatry, Narcology, Medical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Professor Yevhen Oprya, took part in a scientific and practical conference with international participation “Medicine and Pharmacy: Current Issues of General Medical and Pharmaceutical Practices in Wartime” with a report “The Place of Psychiatry in the Work of a General Practitioner – Family Medicine in Modern Conditions”.

The report considered the issues of additional training of general practitioners – general practitioners under the mhGAP program — a global WHO program aimed at increasing access to mental health services by involving primary care healthcare workers (hereinafter referred to as PMH) in providing services to patients with mental disorders.

This program is especially relevant in our time, when the daily life of the population is filled with stress factors of martial law. According to this program, doctors are trained to provide assistance to people with common mental disorders (depression, acute stress reaction, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal behavior, disorders associated with the use of psychoactive substances, other complaints about the state of mental health); to communicate effectively with the patient and his loved ones; to refer to specialists and relevant services (for example, social services, rehabilitation centers, etc.).

Having completed training under mhGAP, family medicine specialists in 2024 were given the opportunity to provide medical services under a separate package of the Medical Guarantees Program “Support and Treatment of Adults and Children with Mental Disorders at the Primary Level of Medical Care”.

Since 2025, the presence of such specialists in primary health care centers (PHCs) is a requirement for receiving the basic package of the Health Guarantee Program “Primary Health Care”.

Also on this day, Professor Yevhen Oprya and Associate Professor Tetyana Chernova joined an online meeting organized by Iryna Mykychak, Advisor to the Prime Minister of Ukraine (Coordination Center for Mental Health of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine). The meeting presented the training programs “Fundamentals of Clinical Management of Common Mental Disorders (mhGAP)” for integration into medical education at the undergraduate level. The programs were developed as part of a pilot by the O. O. Bogomolets National Medical University and verified by WHO experts.