**12. Conclusion**

The chapter acknowledges the major problem of high prevalence of mental disorders in South Africa, as well as inadequate resources to address the problem. However, moderate changes to the primary health care model currently used in South Africa can result in major achievements in offering mental health services, which in turn will benefit the patients and assist health services to address the increasing scourge of mental disorders. This can be achieved by utilizing community health workers (CHWs), who are able to work effectively with marginalized communities, where the need for services is greatest [60]. With proper training, these community health workers can change the landscape of provision of mental health services, with resultant positive health outcomes for affected communities [61].

It is recommended that primary health care services be strengthened to provide comprehensive mental health and mental health services that include screening, brief interventions, referral to treatment and ongoing support [62], which will go a long way in addressing mental health and substance abuse needs for South Africa. Such services are likely to improve the mental disorder treatment needs across the spectrum, and provide the much needed continuity of care across levels [3]. With the integration of community health workers in primary health care service provision, the broader community participation is enabled, which is likely to result in an increased number of mental health activists, and better treatment outcomes for patients.

## **Acknowledgements**

This chapter was jointly-funded by the National Research Foundation, through the NRF Chair in Substance Abuse and Population Mental Health grant, as well as the South African Medical Research Council, through the Substance Abuse and Adolescent Mental Health grant.

### **Author details**

Kebogile Elizabeth Mokwena\* and Velaphi Anthony Mokwena Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University, South Africa

\*Address all correspondence to: kebogile.mokwena@smu.ac.za

© 2021 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
