Scalable Psychological Interventions for Adversity-Affected Communities

Scalable psychological interventions have been developed to meet the needs of people in adversity-affected communities. Across both high-income and low-and-middle income countries, most people in these communities have experienced traumatic events or other extreme stressors such as natural disasters, industrial accidents, chronic poverty, long-term civil conflict, and displacement. These interventions have demonstrated strong efficacy in alleviating mental health disorders and improving functioning across diverse populations within adversity affected communities. Despite their enormous potential, systematic embedding of these interventions within local systems of care has been slow. There is a myriad of determinants at multiple levels of local contexts that influence implementation - policy, institutional, sociocultural, organisational, and individual levels. Our current understanding of these determinants and how they influence real-world implementation is limited by a lack of implementation science driven research within this field.

This Research Topic seeks to gather research that systematically addresses how the implementation of scalable psychological interventions can be promoted within adversity-affected communities. We invite contributions that utilize implementation science methodologies in both an a priori and post-hoc manner. This includes (1) expanding standardized implementation science frameworks and tailoring them for adversity-affected communities, (2) utilization of mixed methods research including hybrid randomised controlled trials, implementation studies, and reviews aligned with Cochrane and GRADE standards. The goal of this Research Topic is to highlight cutting-edge research that informs real-world practice and policy, globally. We aim to seek out research that enhances the capacity of adversity-affected communities to implement scalable psychological interventions, and thereby seek to the bridge the gap between what is known and what is done for the implementation of these interventions.

We welcome submissions that address (but not limited to):

• mechanistic research seeking to understand how and under what conditions implementation of scalable psychological interventions can be promoted in adversity-affected communities

• mixed-methods studies exploring reach, adoption, acceptability, appropriateness, and sustainability of scalable psychological interventions in adversity-affected communities

• scoping reviews, systematic reviews and meta-analyses of implementation of scalable psychological interventions within adversity-affected communities

• testing implementation strategies that target social determinants of mental health in adversity-affected communities

• use of community-based participatory research to strengthen community ownership and sustainability of scalable psychological interventions

• investigation of innovative methods to support sustainability and scalability of psychological interventions.