Cited by 141Mental Health Treatment and AccessPsychiatric care and mental health servicesChronic Disease Management Strategies

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 104 of the 106 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; 2 of the 91 sources its claims cite were checked for support.

Integrated care for people with long-term mental and physical health conditions in low-income and middle-income countries

Open access

Abstract

Integrated care is defined as health services that are managed and delivered such that people receive a continuum of health promotion, disease prevention, diagnosis, treatment, disease management, rehabilitation, and palliative care services, coordinated across the different levels and sites of care within and beyond the health sector and, according to their needs, throughout the life course. In this Review, we describe the most relevant concepts and models of integrated care for people with chronic (or recurring) mental illness and comorbid physical health conditions, provide a conceptual overview and a narrative review of the strength of the evidence base for these models in high-income countries and in low-income and middle-income countries, and identify opportunities to test the feasibility and effects of such integrated care models. We discuss the rationale for integrating care for people with mental disorders into chronic care; the models of integrated care; the evidence of the effects of integrating care in high-income countries and in low-income and middle-income countries; the key organisational challenges to implementing integrated chronic care in low-income and middle-income countries; and the practical steps to realising a vision of integrated care in the future.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

This narrative review describes integrated care models for people with long-term mental and physical conditions, finding that evidence for effectiveness is largely from high-income countries and remains scarce and mostly weak in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). It identifies health-system strengthening, workforce training, financing, governance, and social interventions as key requirements for implementing integrated chronic care in LMICs.

Key findings

  • The structured review identified 1266 database papers; after duplicates, 910 articles were screened, plus 23 grey-literature reports/book chapters, yielding 57 full-text reviews and 21 included papers (18 research papers, 3 book chapters), with reviewer kappa 0.80. Of the 21 studies, 2 were randomised controlled trials, 9 cross-sectional, 2 systematic reviews, and 8 descriptive/narrative; only 4 reported outcomes from evaluations of integrated care for mental illness and long-term physical conditions, and data quality was mostly weak.
  • In high-income countries, integrated chronic care models tend to improve quality of care and patient outcomes; the TeamCare trial for diabetes and/or heart disease plus depression improved physical and mental health outcomes versus usual care. Economic outcomes were less consistent but tended toward positive cost reduction.
  • In LMICs, evidence is far less available. A South African pragmatic cluster trial in 38 primary care clinics (Primary Care 101/PACK) did not show effectiveness on primary outcomes of treatment intensification for hypertension, diabetes, and chronic respiratory disease or depression case detection, but did show secondary benefits for evidence-informed diabetes prescribing and cardiovascular risk management.
  • LMIC studies suggest integrated care is feasible only with health-system strengthening, clear staff roles, access to essential medicines and psychological treatments, and social interventions; key barriers include low health-system preparedness, lack of multidisciplinary teams, insufficient training, fragmented information systems, financing fragmentation, stigma, and weak governance.

Methods

  • The paper combines a conceptual overview with a structured narrative review. Searches of Medline, Embase, and PsycInfo ran from inception to February 2017 using terms for chronic/integrated care, long-term mental or multiple chronic conditions, evaluation/research, and LMICs/developing countries; PRISMA was used, supplemented by grey literature, hand-searching, snowballing, and internet searches.
  • Inclusion criteria were any publication with a descriptive or evaluative component, from an LMIC, written in English, referring to both severe mental illness and a comorbid chronic physical condition. Exclusions were no descriptive/scientific evaluative component, high-income country focus, physical chronic conditions only, non-English, or conference abstracts.
  • Four researchers conducted the review in two pairs, with a third reviewer resolving full-text disagreements and two researchers reaching consensus on grey literature. Quality was assessed with the Effective Public Health Practice Project tool for quantitative studies and a 12-point criteria for qualitative studies, yielding global ratings of weak, moderate, or strong.

Limitations

  • The paper states that evidence for integrated care is still scarce in LMICs, particularly for co-/multi-morbidities that include a mental disorder; the quality of data was rather weak, only eight studies included an explicit evaluative component, and cost-effectiveness evaluations are few in LMICs.
  • The paper notes that lessons from high-income countries may not translate readily to LMICs, self-help and peer-support groups in mental health are poorly developed in many LMICs, and it is not yet clear whether primary and community care personnel are sufficiently prepared and supported for integrated mental health care.
  • Evident from the text: this is a narrative review rather than a systematic meta-analysis; the search ended in February 2017 and was restricted to English-language publications; inclusion required both severe mental illness and a comorbid chronic physical condition, and many included studies were descriptive with no evaluation, limiting causal conclusions.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/s2215-0366(18)30298-0

Cites

104 of 104 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

61 Not checked yet · 15 Own method · 13 Own result · 13 No basis given · 7 Own interpretation · 2 Supported

Verify all 89 references — free account

Show all 36 claims

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 45
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 46
  • The quote only partly states this claim. 1
75 of 75
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Health care systems traditionally focused on acute care now increasingly need to address chronic conditions.

    “Health care systems, which traditionally focused on acute care, now increasingly need also to address the challenge of providing care for people with chronic conditions.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Long-term conditions require alternative approaches to the current health system organization.

    “Long-term conditions require alternative approaches.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Current patterns of service delivery, especially the emphasis on in-patient care in many LMICs, dampen innovation.

    “The inertia of current patterns of service delivery can also dampen innovation, such as the emphasis on in-patient care that remains predominant in many LMICs.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    In many LMICs there is often no organizational culture valuing innovation or quality improvement, or leadership focused on staff development or change.

    “There may be no organizational culture that values innovation or transformation of services, no culture for quality improvement, or a lack leadership focused on staff development or change.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Many women seeking care for chronic conditions also require family planning or antenatal care.

    “Further, many women seeking care for chronic conditions will either also require family planning or antenatal care.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    In many fragile health systems, family planning services are islands of organised care delivery within otherwise chaotic services, making them attractive entry points for integrated care.

    “In many fragile health systems family planning services represent islands of organised care delivery within otherwise chaotic services, making them a very attractive entry point on which to build and strengthen integrated care.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Clinical guidelines tend to add a whole menu of essential assessments, advice and treatments with each additional condition, and when added up health providers can feel overwhelmed and not know what to prioritise.

    “When these are added up, health providers can feel overwhelmed and not know what to prioritise.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Clinical specialists, donors and advocates tend to lobby for vertical services for single conditions, making prioritisation decisions difficult.

    “Such decisions are difficult, especially where clinical specialists, donors and advocates tend to lobby for 'vertical' services for single conditions.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The value of the self, family and community care level in the ICCCF pyramid of care has not been investigated in LMICs.

    “The ICCCF and similar approaches often propose a 'pyramid of care', starting with self and family and community care, where the value of this level of health support has not been investigated in LMICs.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Within LMICs it is not yet clear whether primary and community care health personnel are sufficiently prepared and supported to be trained to adopt a different role, becoming competent both for the treatment of people with long term physical and mental conditions.

    “Within LMICs it is also not yet clear whether primary and community care health personnel are sufficiently prepared and supported to be trained to adopt a different role, becoming competent both for the treatment of people with long term physical and mental conditions.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Health information systems in LMICs are frequently unlinked, incomplete, with little quality assurance, low investment, poor information governance, and with few relevant or useful mental health indicators collected.

    “systems are frequently unlinked, incomplete, with little quality assurance, low investment, poor information governance, and with few relevant or useful mental health indicators collected.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    In under-resourced systems, there is a lack of coordination of what to collect across the system and a lack of understanding of the relevance of data.

    “In under-resourced systems, there can be a lack of coordination of what to collect across the system as well as lack of understanding of the relevance of data.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Insufficient training of clinicians leads to poor quality data in information systems, giving available data limited utility.

    “Insufficient training of clinicians can also lead to poor quality data in information systems, thus giving available data limited utility.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    There was a scarcity of papers with an evaluative component on integrated care for long-term mental and physical health conditions in LMICs.

    “due to the scarcity, we decided to also include those that were descriptive in nature.”
14 of 14

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.

6 of 6

Citations

Cites

Show all 106 references

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. Petersen, 2010, Integrating mental health into primary health care: lessons from pilot district demonstration sites in Uganda and South Africa, S Afr J Psychiatry, 16, 95

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Metadata

Authors
Thornicroft, G., Ahuja, S., Barber, S., Chisholm, D., Collins, P. Y., Docrat, S., Fairall, L., Lempp, H., Niaz, U., Ngo, V., Patel, V., Petersen, I., Prince, M., Semrau, M., Unützer, J., Yueqin, H., & Zhang, S.
Affiliations
  • King's College London (GB)
  • World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe (DK)
  • University of Washington (US)
  • University of Cape Town (ZA)
  • University of Health Sciences Lahore (PK)
  • RAND Corporation (US)
  • Harvard University (US)
  • University of KwaZulu-Natal (ZA)
  • Brighton and Sussex Medical School (GB)
  • Peking University Sixth Hospital (CN)
Corresponding author
Thornicroft, Graham
Venue
The Lancet Psychiatry
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2019-02
Volume
6
Issue
2
Pages
174-186
ISSN
2215-0366 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2889176589
Cited by
138
References
106
Citations by year
2026: 11 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 23 · 2023: 23 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 14 · 2020: 18 · 2019: 11
FWCI
1.71
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • The Lancet Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Research Portal (King's College London) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • Sussex Research Online (University of Sussex) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
Funders
  • National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health (R01MH100470)
  • European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013)
  • UK Medical Research Council in relation to the Emilia (MR/S001255/1)
  • Indigo Partnership (MR/R023697/1)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Mental Health Treatment and Access
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychiatric care and mental health services
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Chronic Disease Management Strategies
Keywords
integrated care, chronic mental illness, somatic comorbidity, low- and middle-income countries, chronic care, care coordination, implementation barriers, organizational challenges, evidence base, mental health services
MeSH terms
Mental Disorders, Chronic Disease, Developing Countries, Humans, Income, Poverty, Primary Health Care, Comorbidity, Delivery of Health Care, Integrated, Disease Management

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-10-09, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).

A second model labelled each claim on 2026-10-09 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).

Cited sources are checked with a language model’s help (gpt-6-sol).

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review