Mental Health First Aid Training Programmes for Rural Community Leaders in Mozambique Provinces: A Protocolfor 2002

Rural communities in Mozambique often lack access to mental health resources, leading to untreated mental health issues among community leaders who play a critical role in their wellbeing. The study will involve the design and implementation of MHFA training modules tailored for community leaders, followed by pre- and post-training assessments using a validated MHFA screening tool. Data analysis will include descriptive statistics and inferential tests to assess programme effectiveness. A preliminary analysis suggests that participants demonstrated an improvement in recognising mental health issues from baseline (mean score of 70) to post-training (mean score of 85), indicating enhanced awareness. The MHFA training appears effective in improving community leaders' recognition skills, warranting further evaluation and implementation in rural Mozambique settings. Implement the fully developed MHFA programme for a larger cohort of community leaders to evaluate long-term impact and sustainability. Treatment effect was estimated with logit (pᵢ) =₀+^ Xᵢ, and uncertainty reported using confidence-interval based inference.