Taghi Yasamy, from the World Health Organization (WHO), Geneva, Switzerland, and colleagues pointed out the difficulties good mental health research governance in low- and middle-income countries face in this week’s PLoS Medicine.

In addition, Yasamy and colleagues offer suggestions on how good mental health research can move forward.

The team acknowledge the need to organize the general direction of mental health research in order to deal with issues, such as research prioritization, organizational structure, relatively limited capacity and resource, as well as to balance costly investigations with evaluation of resources and services using inexpensive techniques.

The researchers, explain:

“Low resource countries face a range of challenges that leads to little or inappropriate research.

They need to use their limited financial and human resources for mental health research as effectively as possible. They need sound governance of their mental health research to achieve this.”

Written by Grace Rattue