AN ACCESSIBLE MODEL TO ADDRESS COMMON MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES
Your complete source on everything CETA! Our goal is to make all materials on a programme easily accessible in one place. If you are aware of additional resources, please contact us.
The Common Elements Treatment Approach (CETA) is designed to treat depression, anxiety, harmful substance use, trauma, and stress-related disorders. CETA is highly accessible, including for low-resource settings, as it can be provided by trained and supervised lay providers, such as community health workers. CETA has been proven to reduce common mental health issues—including trauma, depression, and anxiety—and to reduce harmful substance use and intimate partner violence.
CETA combines treatments for a range of mental health issues into a single model. Core elements of CETA include:
- Engagement and education
- Cognitive coping/thinking differently
- Behavioural activation
- Confronting fears and memories of trauma
- Safety assessment and planning
- Harmful substance use intervention
- Problem-solving
- Anxiety management
Providers receive 10 days of CETA training through practice groups run by local supervisors, close supervision while providing CETA to their first client, and ongoing weekly supervision throughout CETA provision. CETA is uniquely flexible. If a provider needs additional time to complete the goals of an element or to ensure a client can use a skill independently—or if a client presents with different symptoms that require a new or different element—the flow of provision can be adjusted. The CETA supervision structure includes procedures designed to support CETA adherence and competency in providers’ delivery of the elements.
A randomised controlled trial of CETA in Zambia demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach to reduce and prevent physical and sexual violence against women. This trial also demonstrated that CETA reduced harmful alcohol use by men and women, as well as addressed other mental health issues. Mechanisms underlying these changes included the use of de-escalation strategies (i.e., ‘walking away’ and ‘staying quiet’ to stay safe), reductions in male and/or female alcohol use, and increases in intra-couple trust and understanding that facilitated better communication.
CETA was designed and has been evaluated by the Applied Mental Health Research Group at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. If you want to adapt the programme, we strongly recommend that you contact them first.
- CETA has demonstrated that integrated treatment models can be effective with families impacted by violence, harmful alcohol use, and mental health issues common in low-resource countries.
- It is feasible to train local community members to deliver CETA, allowing for broad adoption and scalability.
- CETA’s modular, community-based approach addresses several mental health issues at the same time, enabling scale-up and sustainability in low- and middle-income countries.
- Addressing violence and harmful alcohol use together likely results in a positive social and economic ripple effect across the community.
“BEFORE I STARTED THE PROGRAM, I USED TO THINK I’M THE ONLY HEAD OF THE HOUSE. EVERYTHING- JUST DICTATE- THIS AND THIS, THIS AND THIS. BUT THIS TIME, WE DO SIT TOGETHER, PLAN/CONSULT ONE ANOTHER. SEE THE WAY FORWARD TOGETHER – NOT JUST A ONE-PARTY THING.”
MALE PARTICIPANT AFTER RECEIVING CETA PROGRAMME
