Conference Abstract | Volume 8, Abstract NACNDC/19JASH00068 (Oral) | Published: 11 Dec 2025
Harriet Birabwa-Oketcho1,&, Andrew Turiho2, Catherine Abbo2, Jolly Magulu1, Daphne Achieng1, Kyriaki Kosidou3, Anna-Theresia Ekman3, Leo Ziegel3
1Butabika National Referral Mental Hospital, Kampala, Uganda, 2College of Health Sciences, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, 3Department of Global Public Health, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
&Corresponding author: Harriet Birabwa-Oketcho, Butabika National Referral Mental Hospital, Kampala, Uganda Email: htbrabwa@yahoo.com ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1145-8669
Received: 27 Sep 2025, Accepted: 20 Oct 2025, Published: 11 Dec 2025
Domain: Mental Health
Keywords: Alternative Health Care Providers, Severe Mental Illness, Patterns, Collaboration
©Harriet Birabwa-Oketcho et al. Journal of Interventional Epidemiology and Public Health (ISSN: 2664-2824). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Cite this article: Harriet Birabwa-Oketcho et al. Alternative health care providers for severe mental illness: Mapping patterns of use and perspectives for collaboration with formal healthcare. Journal of Interventional Epidemiology and Public Health. 2025;8(ConfProc6):00068. https://doi.org/10.37432/JIEPH-CONFPRO6-00068
Alternative health care providers (AHCPs) are the first point of contact for many people with severe mental illness in Uganda and collaborations between formal and alternative health care providers are recommended by the World Health Organization. However, there is limited evidence on how people with severe mental illness use AHCPs and how collaborative care can be organized in the Ugandan setting. This study assessed patterns of use of AHCPs among patients with severe mental illness and explored barriers and facilitating factors for collaborations between providers.
Out of 304 survey participants, 62% (189) were female, 50% (153) had bipolar disorder and 36% (110) had schizophrenia. 76% (231) had ever consulted an AHCP for their mental illness, for 45% this was the first point of contact at illness debut. 29% had consulted only a faith healer, 18% only a traditional healer, and 28% both. 45% (137) of survey participants were interested in collaborations between providers but only 1% knew of any existing collaboration. 53% (161) thought such collaboration would not be possible, with the main reason given being perceived incompatibility of methods. Among those who wanted collaborations, the preferred types most frequently mentioned in open-ended questions were: formal and alternative providers referring patients to each other (30%), formal and alternative providers advising each other on treatment (17%) and that formal providers should allow spiritual interventions (15%).
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