@inproceedings{ff9f9e7a347a4376897ec4d8692821cc,
title = "Co-Designing M-Healer: Supporting Lay Practitioner Mental Health Workers in Ghana",
abstract = "Mental health is a vast problem around the globe and is one of the key population health issues in the world today. At any given time, up to 6.8% of the world{\textquoteright}s population suffers from a serious mental illness (SMI) such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. The impacts of SMI on a population are especially challenging in low and middle-income countries (LMIC). Mobile healthcare application research is a growing area of research aiming to ameliorate these challenging impacts. In Ghana, a LMIC in West Africa, mental healthcare systems are severely under-resourced and people with SMI often receive care from lay practitioners such as traditional and faith healers rather than trained mental health clinicians. These challenges exist alongside developed wireless infrastructure. In these contexts, mobile applications can substantially increase access to health information. This is the basis for our work developing a mobile health (mHealth) application to support mental health lay practitioners in Ghana. We describe the ways that our principled design research practice is intersecting with local faith-based practices, vernacular expertise and values, and the practicalities of technology adoption in Ghana.",
keywords = "Ghana, Mental health, Mobile health",
author = "Liam Albright and Hoa Le and Suzanne Meller and {Ofori Atta}, Angela and Attah, {Dzifa A.} and Asafo, {Seth M.} and Collins, {Pamela Y.} and Dror Ben Zeev and Jaime Snyder",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.; 23rd International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2021 ; Conference date: 24-07-2021 Through 29-07-2021",
year = "2021",
doi = "10.1007/978-3-030-90179-0_16",
language = "English",
isbn = "9783030901783",
series = "Communications in Computer and Information Science",
publisher = "Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH",
pages = "115--124",
editor = "Constantine Stephanidis and Margherita Antona and Stavroula Ntoa",
booktitle = "HCI International 2021 - Late Breaking Posters - 23rd HCI International Conference, HCII 2021, Proceedings",
}