{"doi":"10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc_543_22","title":"Stake holder perspectives on the role of accredited social health activists (ASHAs) in Indian public mental healthcare space: A qualitative study","abstract":"Background: Community health workers such as Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) are existing resources who can facilitate the bridging of the mental health treatment gap. Knowing about the perspectives of ASHAs in delivering mental health care and other professionals with experience working in the area of community mental health is imperative. Method: = 10). Focussed Group Discussion (FGD) was conducted under the following themes: acceptance and feasibility of provision of mental health services from ASHA's point of view and understanding the supply and demand side opportunities and challenges. The discussion began with open-ended questions, allowing for new themes to emerge until saturation was reached. Results: ASHAs were willing to incorporate mental health identification (and referral) in their regular activities without additional perceived burden. ASHAs were easily able to identify severe mental disorders (SMDs). For substance use disorders (SUDs), due to factors such as normalization of substance consumption and stigma, there was a felt difficulty in the recognition by ASHAs. ASHAs' difficulty in identifying the CMDs was because of poor awareness in both those with mental illness and ASHAs. Incentivizing the work of ASHAs was thought to yield more returns. Conclusions: ASHAs have the potential to be excellent resources for easy screening, identification, and follow-up of those with mental health concerns in the community. Policies to involve them need to evolve.","journal":"Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care","year":2022,"id":268541,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":4,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9291,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":384923,"name":"Barikar C. Malathesh","orcid":"0000-0001-9107-1717","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":384924,"name":"P. Lakshmi Nirisha","orcid":"0000-0003-0200-9298","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":931349,"name":"Nisha R. Harshitha","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":868797,"name":"Nithesh Kulal","orcid":"0009-0009-2156-3252","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":433993,"name":"Channaveerachari Naveen Kumar","orcid":"0000-0002-4568-0420","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":930730,"name":"Gopi Gajera","orcid":"0000-0001-6702-6107","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":868798,"name":"Satish Suhas","orcid":"0000-0002-4731-1557","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":930731,"name":"Rahul Patley","orcid":"0000-0003-2700-7854","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":931350,"name":"H.A Harshitha","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":384926,"name":"Narayana Manjunatha","orcid":"0000-0003-2718-7904","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":931351,"name":"Adarsha A. Manjappa","orcid":null,"position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":931352,"name":"Suresh B. Math","orcid":null,"position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":384928,"name":"Jagadisha Thirthalli","orcid":"0000-0003-3998-9672","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":930729,"name":"Prateek Varshney","orcid":"0000-0001-6409-5879","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":21,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:27:14.088663Z","pmid":"36993024","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}