Provision of mental health services in resource-poor settings: a randomised trial comparing counselling with routine medical treatment in North Afghanistan (Mazar-e-Sharif)
Open accessAbstract
BACKGROUND: Psychosocial stress caused by war, ongoing conflict, lack of security, and restricted access to resources promotes mental suffering and diseases in many resource-poor countries. In an exemplary setting, the present study compares the efficacy of psychosocial counselling with routine pharmacological treatment in a randomised trial in Mazar-e-Sharif (Afghanistan). METHODS: Help seeking Afghan women (N = 61), who were diagnosed with mental health symptoms by local physicians either received routine medical treatment(treatment as usual) or psychosocial counselling (5-8 sessions) following a specifically developed manualised treatment protocol. Primary outcome measures were symptoms of depression and anxiety assessed before treatment and at follow-up using the Hopkins Symptom Checklist and the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview. Secondary outcome measures were psychosocial stressors and coping mechanisms. RESULTS: At 3-month follow-up, psychosocial counselling patients showed high improvements with respect to the severity of symptoms of depression and anxiety. In addition, they reported a reduction of psychosocial stressors and showed an enhancement of coping strategies. At the same time, the severity of symptoms, the quantity of psychosocial stressors and coping mechanisms did not improve in patients receiving routine medical treatment. CONCLUSION: These results indicate that psychosocial counselling can be an effective treatment for mental illnesses even for those living in ongoing unsafe environments.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
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?
In humanitarian settings, some studies have shown benefits of counseling, whereas others have not.
“In humanitarian settings, some studies have shown benefits of counseling [24],[25], whereas others have not [26]–[28].”
From World Health Organization guidelines for management of acute stress, PTSD, and bereavement: key challenges on the road ahead (2014) · cites this paper as [24]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 26 · Cited by 43
Research works printed but not linked: 2
- World Health Organization Working together for health - The world health Report 2006 2006 WHO Press
- Jacob N Neuner F Schaal S Mädl A Elbert T Dissemination of psychotherapy for trauma-spectrum disorders in resource-poor countries: A randomized controlled trial in Rwanda Psychotherapy & Psychosomatics in press 25323203
- Authors
- Ayoughi, S., Missmahl, I., Weierstall, R., & Elbert, T.
- Affiliations
- University of Konstanz (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Ayoughi, Sarah
- ORCID
- Elbert, Thomas
- Venue
- BMC Psychiatry
- Published
- 2012-02-29
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 14-14
- ISSN
- 1471-244X (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3314541
- OpenAlex
- W2124626232
- Cited by
- 43
- References
- 26
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 5.29
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- BMC Psychiatry (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- KOPS (University of Konstanz) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Mental Health Treatment and Access
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Migration, Health and Trauma
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Maternal Mental Health During Pregnancy and Postpartum
- Keywords
- psychosocial counseling, depression, anxiety, mental health services, resource-limited settings, combat stress, psychosocial stressors, coping strategies, women, Afghanistan, conflict-affected populations, pharmacological treatment comparison
- MeSH terms
- Adaptation, Psychological, Afghanistan, Anxiety, Counseling, Depression, Female, Follow-Up Studies, Humans, Mental Health, Mental Health Services, Severity of Illness Index, Stress, Psychological, Treatment Outcome
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.
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
