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June 14th 2021

• Harvard Affiliate Corner
• Upcoming Mental Health Related Webinars
• Mental Health Media & Paper Chase
• Survey Participation
• Opportunities

Application Deadline Extended to this Friday June 18th!! 
GMH@Harvard Student Research Assistant Program 

We are excited to announce the inaugural GMH@Harvard Student Research Assistant Program! The Student RA Program is based upon a cooperative three-party relationship between GlobalMentalHealth@Harvard, the program host supervisors and the Student RAs. 

Harvard undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in applying should read through the program overview and apply via this link. 

Apply to work directly with the following supervisors. Read more about their research in the program overview

• Ronald C. Kessler & Jason Bantjes
• Michael Stein
• Wafaie Fawzi & Sachin Shinde
• Karestan Koenen & Kristina Korte
• Elizabeth Levey
• Soo Jeong Young
• Shekhar Saxena
• Michèle Lamont
• Vikram Patel & John Naslund

Free Daily Live - Online Mindfulness Sessions 
Hosted by: Cambridge Health Alliance
In light of COVID-19, Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) Center for Mindfulness and Compassion offers free guided daily online practices. These practices are secular and open to all. Sessions include Mindful Movement, bringing kindness to our stress, anxiety, grief and fear, Weekly People of Color (POC) Mindfulness Practice, Mindfulness Practice for Addiction Recovery, Mindfulness of Breathing, Mindful Movement in Spanish and Mindfulness Practices in Portuguese. We look forward to you joining us!

See the Schedule, as well as more specialized offerings, here. 

JUNE - WHO Mental Health Events 

Launch of LIVE LIFE guide on preventing suicide

Time: 8-9 am New York time, 2-3 pm Geneva time, 17.30-16.30 New Delhi time
Date: Thursday 17 June 2021

Join us for the launch of a new comprehensive guide on the implementation of suicide prevention interventions. 
Participants will hear from guests whose lives have been affected by suicide and WHO experts outlining the strategies that make up WHO’s LIVE LIFE approach to suicide prevention. 

LIVE LIFE recognizes the role that both governments and communities play in suicide prevention. Currently just 38 countries are known to have a national suicide prevention strategy. While a funded national suicide prevention strategy that includes LIVE LIFE interventions and pillars remains the pinnacle of a government-led response to suicide, the absence of such a strategy should not prevent a country from starting LIVE LIFE implementation. This guide will help governments and community organizations to take evidence-based actions to protect the lives of people who find themselves in severe distress and are at risk of suicide. 

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3rd Global Forum on Alcohol, Drugs and Addictive Behaviours

Date: 22-25 June 2021

If you are interested in attending the Forum, please contact msd-ada@who.int. 

The 3rd Global Forum, being hosted virtually, will cover diverse issues related to the public health dimensions of alcohol use, psychoactive drug use and addictive behaviours. The  impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on substance use and policy and services responses will be discussed as will progress with the achievement of international targets to strengthen the prevention and treatment of substance use disorders and an action plan for the period 2022-2030 to accelerate implementation of the “Global strategy to reduce the harmful use of alcohol”.  

The primary goal of the Forum, organized by the Alcohol, Drugs and Addictive Behaviours (ADA) Unit of WHO’s Department of Mental Health and Substance Use at WHO, is to strengthen partnerships and collaboration among public health organizations, networks and institutions on the harmful use of alcohol and drugs and also addictive behaviours. 

Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) Around the Globe A Speaker Series
Hosted jointly by the Harvard Medical School Center for Global Health Delivery and the Brigham Health Program in Opioid and Pain Innovation (POPI)

June 1, 8, 22, 29 - 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. (EST)
June 15 - 8 a.m.-9 a.m. (EST)

This workshop aims to bring together stakeholders and scientists from different countries to examine and showcase a number of practice-based approaches and public health policies from around the world that address opioid use disorder and opioid-related overdoses and deaths. 

Mental Health Amid Multiple Crises: The Lebanon Story 
The Global & Local Center for Mental Health Disparities at Boston Medical Center & BU School of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital's Chester M. Pierce, MD Division of Global Psychiatry, Boston Children's Hospital, and Boston College School of Social Work

Tuesday, June 15 | 12pm-1pm ET

Presenter: Dr. Rabih El Chammay
Head of the National Mental Health Programe, Lebanon

Dr. Rabih El Chammay is a psychiatrist and currently the head of the National Mental Health Programme at the Ministry of Public Health in Lebanon. After founding the programme, he led the development of the first National Mental Health and Substance Use Strategy 2015-2020 aiming at reforming the Mental Health System in Lebanon towards community-based mental health services in line with Human rights and latest evidence that is currently under implementation. He is a member of the Department of Psychiatry at the faculty of Medicine at Saint Joseph University in Beirut. He has been working in Public mental health, Refugee mental health and health system strengthening for more than 10 years. He has been working on these topics in the MENA region as well as on the international level with various agencies such as WHO, UNHCR, UNICEF, IMC and many other NGOs.

Email BMC Global and Local Center for Mental Health Disparities for the Zoom link

Young Mental Health Leaders Series: LGBTQ+ Youth Mental Health 
GMH@Harvard & Mental Health America Collaborative Webinar Series

Tuesday June 22nd 2pm ET 

A recent report from the Trevor Project showed that almost half of all LGBTQ+ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in 2020. At the same time, only half of the youth surveyed could access wanted mental health care. As we work to build better systems, young people are leading the way in creating conversations and solutions to improve mental health among LGBTQ+ youth.

Join Mental Health America and the GlobalMentalHealth@Harvard Initiative for the next 60-minute conversation in our Young Mental Health Leaders Series. In each session, we bring together leading researchers and young mental health advocates to discuss the current challenges and successes in youth mental health. 

In this session, activist Juan Acosta will join Trill Project co-founders Ari Sokolov and Georgia Messinger to talk about their experiences as advocates in programs, policy, and organizations. The session will be moderated by Dr. Ana M. Progovac, Instructor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Senior Scientist at the Health Equity Research Lab.

Uplift by Youth Era
Youth Era

June 28 - July 2

Apply to the next Uplift event here. 

The world has been sidelined by 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Graduations canceled, special moments lost, and worse? Isolation is pushing all of us to the limits. Extraordinary challenges require extraordinary interventions.  

Explore your own personal power and get ready to uplift your peers while claiming your community! This brand new, Virtual 360° Interactive Experience is custom built for youth and young adults and is unlike anything you have ever experienced before.

UpLift is designed to help you master the most modern psychology hacks to support your peers going through difficult times. This virtual event will motivate, empower, and support you to change the lives of those around you.

• Just launched at International AIDS Society (IAS) 2021! New JIAS Special Issue entitled: “Global Mental Health and HIV Prevention and Care”, guest edited by Drs Robert H Remien, Melanie Amna Abas, Vikram Patel and Dixon Chibanda. People living with HIV continue to experience higher rates of mental health disorders, which can present substantial barriers to adequate engagement and retention in HIV care. The collection of articles in this special issue emphasize the need for integrating mental health services within a range of HIV Programmes. Stay tuned for the publication on June 24th. 

• Project Manager - The Cardiac Psychiatry Research Program (CPRP) aims to improve the mental health and medical outcomes of patients with heart disease. We are seeking a part-time (20 hours/week) project manager to work with our multidisciplinary team on several research projects to promote mental and physical health in individuals with medical illnesses, such as cardiovascular disease. The project manager would assist team members with all aspects of the research process, including the submission of grant proposals, initiation of clinical trials, completion of regulatory documentation, communication with funding agencies, management of grant finances, and the dissemination of the results of our projects. The project manager would be trained by our multidisciplinary Cardiac Psychiatry Research Program team and would work closely with the research program’s head physicians and psychologists. Work would occur remotely or in-person at the MGH main campus. This position is ideal for someone who is interested in project management, clinical research, and collaboration with a multidisciplinary research team. Our program seeks to provide personalized mentoring and training and to foster career advancement. Email jhuffman@partners.org for more information

• Projects on Emotional Well-being and Economic Burden-Related Booster Pilot Studies
  (RFA-EMOT-ECON-BP-21-001). The Emotional Well-being and Economic Burden (EMOT-ECON) Research Network is one of five research networks funded by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) to refine and test key concepts that advance the study of emotional well-being. The EMOT-ECON network aims to advance the understanding of economic burden of disease and emotional well-being, and generate the body of knowledge necessary for developing interventions that minimize the impact of this burden and enhance emotional well-being (Grant: U24AT011310). EMOTECON is funded by NCCIH and the National Institutes of Health Office of the Director (NIHOD). 

• Individuals interested in learning more about this opportunity should reach out to Alisa Lincoln, Associate Dean of Research; Director, Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice Research; Professor of Health Sciences and Sociology College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Bouvé College of Health Sciences, Norteastern University.