Global mental health: the role of collaboration during the COVID-19 pandemic.

[...]the Africa Global Mental Health Institute (AGMHI) (Grillo et al., 2019), which was established in 2016 to reduce the burden of mental illness and build the infrastructure necessary to make systematic changes in mental health care delivery across the African continent, offered a series of lectures delivered via Zoom that discussed strategies for bidirectional capacity-building during the pandemic. [...]using technology in novel ways, such as offering mental health support via telemedicine to healthcare providers, improved intra-country partnerships and suggested future opportunities to provide more readily accessed mental health care. The importance of addressing mental health needs was brought to the forefront during the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in new funding pathways as the world seeks to understand both the virus and its psychosocial impact. A new collaboration developed among researchers in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Uganda, stemming from knowledge sharing through the AGMHI, is a prime example, whereby partners sought collaborative COVID-19 specific grants aiming to evaluate and address mental health needs among mental health care workers across countries.