The Scotland Malawi Mental Health Education Project (SMMHEP) is a registered Scottish charity that aims to provide sustainable support for psychiatric teaching and training for health care professionals in Malawi. 

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) equipment from Leverndale hospital’s ECT Service, managed by Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP), was recently donated to the project. 

Currently the principal activities of the project are delivery of undergraduate medical student teaching and in recent years post graduate teaching of psychiatry trainees.

Mental health provision in the country lags a decade or more behind that of neighbouring states. Mental health patients are largely cared for by a small number of Clinical Officers, who have a BSc in medicine and specialist training in psychiatry, or by psychiatric nurses. 

Working together with Malawian medics and institutions since 2006, SMMHEP's aim is to train and support doctors locally so that Malawi has a sustainable level of skilled mental health professionals.

Dr David Crossley, a previous Clinical Lead for Psychotherapy in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) and Chairman of SMMHEP said: “Several times a year a group of volunteer psychiatrists travel to teach theoretical and clinical skills in psychiatry at College of Medicine (CoM) Blantyre and Zomba Mental Hospital (ZMH) in Malawi. 

“The project has developed a new undergraduate curriculum, utilising a wide variety of teaching materials and methods, and an examination process. Evaluation of the teaching suggests that it meets the standard of a Scottish University.” 

In response to requests from staff at ZMH, SMMHEP also provided equipment and training for ECT as this offers a vital treatment option when other treatment options are limited. 

Over the course of providing treatment for over a decade this equipment eventually failed to function, resulting in this valuable treatment option being unavailable over the last few years. SMMHEP made an appeal to the ECT community in Scotland for assistance to obtain equipment to allow them to continue to deliver ECT. 

Stephen Kelly, ECT Coordinator/Clinical Manager, ECT Service, Leverndale Hospital said: “At the time of this request we were in the process of replacing our ECT machines at Leverdale’s ECT Service so we were able to offer two ECT machines to the Project.”

On receiving the offer of the equipment, Dr Carol Robertson from the SMMHEP said: “The project has been working with Zomba Mental Hospital in Malawi for over 17 years to provide education to undergraduate medical staff. We’ve now trained four Consultants from the Malawians sponsored by our project, who are now running the services in the country. We’ve also supported the provision of ECT – a vital treatment option when other therapeutic pathways are limited.  The provision of these vital machines will assist us greatly to continue to support the service.” 

SMMHEP is a small, Scottish-registered charity, run entirely by volunteers, both in Scotland and Malawi. SMMHEP is managed by a Board of Trustees in co-ordination with a Management Committee. The primary funder is the Scottish Government. More information is available on the SMMHEP website.