PRIME Maternal Mental Health Report Maggie Marx 10.25375/uct.7725473.v1 https://zivahub.uct.ac.za/articles/book/PRIME_Maternal_Mental_Health_Report/7725473 This report addresses PRIME's efforts to also research how to improve maternal mental health through the integration of mental healthcare into primary care in each of the PRIME countries in Ethiopia, India,Uganda,South Africa. PRIME is an eight-year, DFID-funded Research Programme Consortium (RPC), which aims to generate high quality research evidence on the implementation and scaling up of treatment programmes for priority mental disorders in primary healthcare contexts in low resource settings. PRIME has developed, implemented, evaluated and scaled up integrated mental healthcare plans (MHCPs). A situation analysis of maternal mental health was conducted across all five PRIME countries. There was a wide range of community and facility-based prevalences of perinatal depression across the countries (3–50 %). In South Africa, India and Ethiopia, maternal mental health was included in mental health policies and a mental health care plan was in the process of being implemented in South Africa. There were no dedicated maternal mental health services, but referrals to specialised care in psychiatric units or general hospitals were possible. No information was available on maternal mental health care coverage. Challenges to care included: limited evidence on feasible detection and treatment strategies for maternal mental disorders, lack of mental health specialists in the public health sector, lack of prescribing guidelines for pregnant and breastfeeding women, stigmatising attitudes among primary health care staff and the community.From the outset, maternal mental health was identified as a focus area for PRIME. 2019-09-13 06:49:04 Programme for Improving Mental Health Maternal Mental Health Mental Health Ethiopia Uganda South Africa Nepal India Mental Health