“Building back better”: Task shifting is the way forward for Sri Lanka to address maternal mental health in the economic crisis

Abstract

Maternal mental health is a global priority. Like other low-and middle-income countries, maternal mental health issues are highly prevalent in Sri Lanka. While the country claims to have achieved a satisfactory level of maternal health care indicators in the Southeast Asian region, maternal mental health care remains ignored. The COVID-19 pandemic followed by the economic crisis of 2022 has worsened the situation in the country by increasing the prevalence of maternal mental health issues and limiting the availability of and capacity of the country to allocate resources for the healthcare provision for maternal mental health issues. Integrating task-shifted, non-specialist based, mental healthcare into the existing maternal healthcare programme is considered a cost-effective approach in addressing maternal mental health. In this article, we discuss the opportunities and challenges of employing task shifting to address maternal mental health issues in Sri Lanka.