Mental Health Training for Primary Health Care Professionals: strategies and challenges in qualifying care.
Continuing education, Mental Health, Primary Health Care
Mental illness is a phenomenon that has affected diverse populations around the world. PHC is considered strategic in identifying, receiving, managing cases of mental illness, and communicating with the network, serving as the gateway to mental health care. However, teams face significant challenges, such as a lack of qualified professionals and insufficient integration with the psychosocial care network, resulting in difficulties in receiving and managing cases. The main objective of the study is to evaluate an educational intervention for mental health care in PHC and to develop a mental health care flow for the municipality. The methodology will be based on action research, allowing a collaborative approach to identify and propose interventions for mental health care in PHC. The study setting for this research will be the municipality of Ruy Barbosa, located in the interior of the state of Rio Grande do Norte (RN). The study participants will be all Primary Health Care professionals, totaling 20 people from the ESF and 5 from the NASF. The research will take place in stages, namely: Stage 1 – Exploratory phase – Situational diagnosis, where interviews and situational diagnosis will be carried out, identifying the profile of workers and their main demands; Stage 2 – Action Development – This stage involves two processes: Planning the Educational Offer and the Educational Offer itself. Stage 3 – Dissemination of research findings – Changes in the work process and presentation of the final research results to the municipality. The data will be analyzed in stages, the first involving the consolidation of participant information, using descriptive statistics for sociodemographic and professional data and Minayo's content analysis for qualitative data. The expectation is that the intervention will contribute to the qualification of mental health care and access, improving the reception and management of cases in PHC, timely referral to the Psychosocial Care Network, and more effective and humanized care.