THUNAIUN's Thinking Healthy Program is a community mental health program for pregnant and new mothers. It is designed to be a psycho-social intervention that can be delivered by a community worker or someone with a lived experience as a mother.
Thunai is offering training in Thinking Healthy Program (THP) protocol to social workers interested in maternal and infant care.
Key concepts behind the THP program
It is a psycho-social intervention involving multiple conversations with the mother and family. It does not provide medications. Mothers are provided with some inputs to monitor their mental health and create good habits to support their wellness. (Mood, Sleep and Nutrition Charts for instance).
It has a simple to administer screening (PHQ9) that can identify mothers having current depressive symptoms and/or at risk of poor mental health in future.
Core part of THP is a brief Cognitive Therapy to remedy negative thinking patterns that are common among mothers
It is structured into 3 parts; 1) Mother's wellness 2) Mother's bonding with the Child and 3) Her relationship with family and others.
Instead of stigmatising with descriptions such as "depression", the focus is on maternal well being and its important link to the well being of the child and its future. Family may disagree on many things but infant's health and well being is a common agenda for all. Mother as a primary caregiver should be cared for to get the best outcome for the child.
It involves the family on the whole while working within our cultural settings.
It encourages holistic, integrative approach to well being - rather than sticking to one particular intervention, it emphasises the need to integrate multiple approaches (whatever is available and accessible to the mother)
Please contact us if you are interested in our training for THP implementation.