5th Edition of Addiction World Conference 2026

Abstract

Due to the high prevalence of mental health disorders in Mexico, including substance use disorders, the high demand for treatment for these conditions, and the significant gap in access to care, as well as the stigma associated with seeking treatment, the lack of standardization, monitoring, and evaluation in service implementation, and, more broadly, the barriers that prevent individuals with mental health and/or addiction-related problems from receiving the care they require, it is necessary to standardize the processes involved in implementing psychological interventions within existing services.

Therefore, the objective of this study is to design and evaluate a comprehensive remote implementation plan for existing evidence-based psychological interventions in mental health and addiction care services. This study will employ a pre-experimental quantitative design with a control group and a non-probabilistic purposive sample of participants from Community Mental Health and Addiction Centers located in four states of the Mexican Republic.

Through the development of an implementation guide based on the WHO Psychological Interventions Implementation manual, the current status of implementation will be assessed, and the implementation processes of psychological interventions for mental health and substance use problems will be strengthened in first-level care units of the Community Mental Health and Addiction Centers.

The results of this study are expected to provide evidence regarding the effectiveness of using this implementation guide, supporting its adoption as a public policy instrument and its use across all first-level care centers dedicated to the treatment of mental health and addiction-related problems in Mexico. Ultimately, this would contribute to substantially improving the quality and reach of care provided to the population.