Mind the gap! : A discussion on the disparity between low and high income countries in the provision of mental health care and the implications for capacity building in Kenya’s nursing workforce.

About fourteen per cent of the global burden of disease has been attributed to mental, neurological and substance use disorders. A number of initiatives have been launched in recent years to respond to this, the World Health Organisation (WHO) introduced the Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) to address the widening gap between what is needed to provide adequate mental health services and what is currently available, especially in low and middle income countries where the gap is widest.
This discussion paper will focus on mental health nursing in Kenya, a country in East Africa with a population of 42 million people. Mental illness is common in Kenya with up to twenty five per cent prevalence rates, yet mental health services are sparse at the tertiary and primary care level and mental health remains a low budget and policy priority for the government. The aim of this paper is to raise participants’ awareness of the challenges of delivering mental health nursing care in low-income countries such as Kenya, and to explore possible solutions to the problem.

Intergenerational effects of the Holocaust : subjective well-being in the offspring of survivors

Offspring of Holocaust survivors have been the subject of much research into how traumatic events affect future generations. This study considers the effects of the Holocaust on the well-being rather than trauma of offspring of Holocaust survivors in Australia. 285 Jewish participants completed a questionnaire to measure components of subjective well-being. Analyses revealed that offspring of Holocaust survivors reported lower general positive mood than non-OHS. This result was limited to offspring of Holocaust survivors with two survivor parents. These findings imply that effects of the Holocaust are transmitted to nonclinical offspring of Holocaust survivors and that the number of survivor parents is a crucial determinant in understanding these transgenerational outcomes.