The Mental Health and Substance Use Unit of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), in collaboration with the Virtual Campus of Public Health (VCPH), PAHO´s educational platform, have designed self-learning courses to strengthen capacities and competencies in the field of mental health in the context of public health in the Region of the Americas.
All the courses are self-paced and entirely free, and the Pan American Health Organization issues a certificate of participation upon completion.
The brochure with all the courses is also available.
Engaging Communities in Preventing Suicide
This e-learning course comprises six modules that cover step-by-step guidance on how to engage communities in suicide prevention. Each module covers a particular step in the process of developing, implementing, and evaluating an action plan for suicide prevention led from within the community.
This course is designed for anyone interested in developing activities to prevent suicide in their local community.
Duration: 7HS
Protection and promotion of human rights in mental health and psychosocial support in emergencies
This course aims to introduce the principles and tools to promote a quality and rights-based approach to MHPSS response in humanitarian emergencies and disasters.
Duration: 7HS
Preventing Self-harm/suicide: Empowering Primary Health Care providers
This course has been designed to train healthcare workers on the most relevant elements in the knowledge, management, and prevention of suicide.
Duration: 16HS
Psychological First Aid (PFA) in disaster management in the Caribbean
The Psychological First Aid (PFA) course is a twelve-hour self-paced training. It aims to equip lay persons with the tools to appropriately provide the initial response to individuals experiencing psychological distress secondary to crisis situations.
The second edition of this course includes special considerations for how to utilize PFA skills in ways that are safe for both the helper and the person who is in distress during an outbreak of disease, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This new content has been integrated across the 6 modules of the course.
Duration: 10HS
iSupport For Dementia - Training and support manual for carers of people with dementia
iSupport has been developed to provide accessible, evidence-based training and information, tailored to carers’ needs. It aims to improve knowledge and caregiving skills, such as carers’ ability to cope with dementia symptoms and care for themselves. iSupport seeks to enable people with dementia to live in the community while preventing or reducing carer stress. The lessons included in this manual were carefully designed to help carers tackle the important challenges that they may face when caring for someone living with dementia.
Duration: 7HS
Understanding and acting against mental health stigma in health contexts
The main purpose of the course is to help health professionals identify the stigma associated with mental health challenges and/or substance use disorders and to implement effective personal and institutional actions to achieve greater inclusion and accompaniment of people with mental health conditions, that make health contexts spaces free of stigma.
Duration: 25HS
Humanitarian mhGAP
This course provides health professionals, primarily those working at the first level of care, with tools and recommendations around first-line care and treatment of mental, neurological and substance use disorders (MNS) in humanitarian crisis situations, where there is often little access to specialists and limited treatment options.
It also provides essential information taken from the full version of the mhGAP Intervention Guide and includes additional elements that specifically apply to humanitarian crisis situations.
Duration: 12HS
Clinical supervision for mental health interventions
The course is aimed at mental health specialists who are responsible for the accompaniment, monitoring, and/or clinical supervision of personnel (mental health or general health) who care for people with mental health conditions. The aim is to provide mental health specialists with sufficient and evidence-based tools to supervise professionals performing clinical Mental Health interventions.
Duration: 25HS
WHO QualityRights e-training on mental health
The course aims to improve the quality of care in mental health and related services and to promote the rights of people with psychosocial, intellectual, and cognitive disabilities.
Duration: 24HS
Introducing Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) in emergencies
The course aims to strengthen the skills of healthcare professionals working in emergency situations to establish mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) activities in countries.
Duration: 7HS