Thinking Healthy Approach in Prevention of Perinatal Depression and Anxiety Disorders

From 28 to 30 October 2020, the training course on Thinking healthy approach in prevention of perinatal depression and anxiety disorders was held in Can Tho, under the joint-protect cooperation between Can Tho University of Medicine and Pharmacy (CTUMP) and the Washington University USA. The Research and Training Centre for Community Development (RTCCD) was contracted by the CTUMP to deliver the training course. This training course was developed based on the mental health and gender empowerment component of the Early Journey of Life project which has been develpoed and delivered to 84 communes in Ha Nam provine in an randomized clustered control trial for 2 years (2018-2020).

The joint-project of CTUMP and the Washington University has two components: (1) perinatal depression prevention and (2) depression diagnosis and treatment provision to women in needs. This training course, delivered by RTCCD, focused on perinatal depression prevention component. The training focuses on:

1. Instructing participants 4 sessions of community-based perinatal depression and anxiety prevention

• Session 1: Happy pregnancy
• Session 2: Learning to be a postive husband and father
• Session 3: Postpartum depression and prevention
• Session 4: Understanding your partner’s emotion

2. Instructing participants of home-visits to support women with perinatal depression which be diagnosed by the professional psychiatrist

3. Providing guidance to participants of progress monitoring and report template

There were 29 participants, of whom 21 people (16 collaborators and 5 commune health worker) coming from from My Khanh & Tan Thoi commune and 8 lecturers of Can Tho University of Medicine and Pharmacy.

I. Objectives of the Training Course

1. Understand thinking healthy approach and be able to deliver the four educational sessions of thinking healthy to pregnant and post delivery mothers in their settings
2. Feel confident in conducting community-based educational sessions, individual home-visits
3. Make follow-up plan to support women in needs

II. Training Implementation

This was an on-the-job training course which combined theory knowledge provision with self-practicing, questions and answering, role-playing activities, of which the role-play and feedback was of focus to improve skills of participants.

After all class participants understood and mastered the skills of 4 sessions, then the trainers instructed the home-visit counselling sessions.

III. Training Evaluation

The following are results from evaluation of the course collect from 21 participants. At the end of training course, the participants were request to complete a Post-training Evaluation From including 5 sessions as below:

Changes in knowledge , skills and confidence

Levels of satisfaction compared to participants’ expectation

Appropriateness of training methods

Usefulness when applying kmowledge from training course into their own project work

Relevance of training content to community work

1. After training course, this rate has changed, 86% of participants have mastered that the Thinking Healthy program consists of 3 steps.
2. After 4-day training, 81% participants identify the right steps to take to change your thinking from negative to positive
3. After the training, in which the very self-confidence level increases highly, with 81% for PHQ9 and 52% for EPDS toolkit
4. 100% of participants agreed that the course was much better than expectation
5. 100% of participats evaluated the training method was very suitable for them, without any opinon that the teaching method was inappropriate
6. 17/21 participants found it very useful, accounting for 81%, while 4/21 participants evaluated it useful, accounting for 19%, without any oponion that it was not useful.