In an icy week in February, a dramatic and interesting meeting of the MEGA project took place in Turku, Finland. Events included: a pilot fainting, a broken shoulder, a twisted ankle, lost luggage, and project partners getting lost all over the city.
During the meeting, it was ascertained that the development of educational material is on schedule. An exciting interactive platform was created which includes free downloads of further reading materials, assessment of mental health disorders, epidemiology of mental health disorders, mental health promotion and services, and concept of mental health.
After a slippery start, we now know we want to have validated screening questions for the app. Riga team is ready for the coding and we are planning to have the beta version of the app ready in April 2019.
Although we still face challenges with ethical approvals in some sites, other parts of the project are moving on. Looking at the preliminary findings from Zambia, the research team realized that there are no screening tools for primary health care workers. In addition, we realized that mental health literacy in primary health care is not adequate.
After the hearty Viking meal, we have set our sails in the Baltic Sea towards the creation and implementation of the app. The sea that lies ahead is vast, but our ship moves steadily towards results!
