Psychosocial Support to People affected by TB

Who can provide Psychosocial support?

Family Members, Peer groups, treatment support groups, TB Champions, Community Health Volunteers(CHVs) and NGOs can provide psychosocial support to TB patients and their families by:

• Building a strong sense of community
• Helping the patients to contact a health worker or visit a health facility
• Providing treatment support to take their drugs and finish their treatment. Family members, community-based volunteers and workers can be trained as treatment supporters by NGOs
• Facilitating patients to access DBT for nutritional support under NPY
• Helping TB patients with comorbidities to visit the referral facility for treatment
• Treatment adherence support through peer support and education and individual follow up
• Home-based palliative care for TB
• Awareness generation, providing right information, behaviour change communication and community mobilisation for reducing stigma and discrimination
• Facilitating patients to join yoga/meditation/exercise groups once the active phase is over
• Facilitating and arranging rehabilitative services for problems/disabilities in TB patients
• Social and livelihood support
• Food supplementation
• Income-generation activities(NGO can start or facilitate patients to join activities like candle making, making festival-related goods)
• Sensitising PRIs to engage TB patients(who can work) through the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme(MGNREGS)