One of Jaya’s current and most ambitious projects in South Asia, is to support Nepal’s only state-run mental hospital to improve the quality of care provided to people affected by mental illness. As part of this project, we will be working alongside Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust (BDCT), one of our latest and most important partners in the UK.

Much of the work we will be doing at the Mental Hospital in Nepal will involve treatment for mental illness that focusses on the person. This type of treatment is currently unavailable to people affected by mental illness in Nepal.

We will do this with the support of nurses and other health professionals currently working in Bradford who will be encouraged to exchange skills and resources with their Nepalese colleagues in a spirit of mutual learning and support.

This month, Nepal based Sailesh Bhandari (Jaya Nursing Educator) and Luvana Shrestha (Jaya Country Director, Nepal) were welcomed by staff from Bradford’s hospital and community-based mental health services to visit some of BDCT’s services available to people living in Bradford and its surrounding areas.

The aim of skills exchange programmes like the one developed by Jaya Mental Health and BDCT is not only to improve standards of mental health care in South Asia, but also to support NHS-based care staff in their roles, and to highlight the huge potential UK-based nurses have to change mental health care service delivery both home and overseas.