Abstract:
BACKGROUND : The World Health Organisation (WHO) and other legislative mandates such as South African Mental
Health Care Act 17 of 2002, advocate for mental health services to be rendered at the community level closer to
the families. This requires task sharing of mental health activities with community health care workers.
OBJECTIVE : To identify the existing literature on enablers and barriers of task sharing of mental health services to
community health care workers at the community level.
METHODS : The scoping review was guided by Arksey and O’Malley (2005) framework. Literature was searched in
the following databases: Academic Search Complete, Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition, Pubmed, APA
PsychInfo, and Medline via Ebscohost.
RESULTS : 15 articles were eligible for inclusion; however, 6 articles were excluded following full-text screening
because they did not have sufficient information on the task sharing of mental health services. Therefore 9 articles
met the inclusion criteria. Seven themes were identified of which three are barriers (individual factors
(insufficient training, stigma, and family resistance), organisational factors (lack of supervision, lack of equipment,
and work overload) and confidentiality and four are enablers (ongoing training, CHWs are known to the
community, collaboration of CHWs with the key stakeholders, and feasibility of task sharing of Mental Health
Services with CHWs).
CONCLUSION : As evidenced by the results of the reviewed literature, if the barriers can be managed or dealt with it
is feasible to implement the task sharing of mental health services to community health care workers at the
community level.
