Tiyatien Health has won the grand prize in a global competition seeking “the best solutions to improve mental health in communities around the world.” Sponsored by Ashoka Foundation’s Changemakers and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the “Rethinking Mental Health: Improving Community Wellbeing” competition drew over 340 submissions from 42 countries.

Selected for its “vision, impact and unique approach”, Tiyatien Health’s winning Changemaker submission -- a project dubbed “Rebuilding Hope after War” -- partners with the Liberian Ministry of Health to employ local residents as community health workers who team-up with mid-level clinicians to treat depression and epilepsy. TH trains non-physician clinicians in simplified, evidence-based protocols. Community health workers (CHWs) lead group counseling sessions and identify, monitor, and support patients on treatment. The Rebuilding Hope initiative serves over 100 patients at Tubman Hospital in Zwedru, Liberia.

“The CHWs provide an ideal solution to Liberia’s triple threat of severe resource shortages, extreme deficits of trained health workers, and highly dispersed rural populations,” said Dr. Pat Lee, a Harvard-based physician and Director of Tiyatien’s Chronic Disease programs. “We will rigorously evaluate this mental health program as an effective solution for Liberia and a model for other rural, post-conflict settings.”

TH’s community-based strategy works to provide high-quality primary health care and promote job creation among the poor in rural Liberia. “Our model is effective because it is highly participatory”, said Gideon Tenty, a former Liberian war refugee and community mental health leader at Tiyatien Health. “Our programs are directly designed by the people served by them in collaboration with public health experts.”

“The Changemakers prize offers hope to Liberians suffering from the silent burden of depression and other mental health disorders,” said Dr. Amisha Raja, a VA-based expert in psychological treatment of war victims and co-founder of Tiyatien Health. In 2008, a landmark national study of 1666 households that Dr. Raja and TH helped organize uncovered that over 40% of Liberian adults suffer from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Three years ago, Ministry of Health leaders declared the lack of mental health services an emergency,” said Dr. Raj Panjabi, a Liberian-born, Harvard-trained physician and Executive Director at Tiyatien Health. “By bringing international recognition to this work, the Ashoka Changemakers prize honors the bold commitment of the Liberian government’s Mental Health Taskforce and its many partners who seek to close the mental health treatment gap.”

Tiyatien Health will receive $5000 and its work will be highlighted on the Ashoka Foundation’s website, Changemakers.com, “where innovators, investors, and supporters come together to help refine and scale up the impact of the newest, best ideas for social change.