From assessment to recovery: Psychotherapy-informed psychiatric team care in low-resource settings

Mental health services in low-resource settings face a persistent mismatch between population need, specialist workforce capacity, continuity of care, and access to evidence-based psychological and psychiatric interventions. This narrative review examines psychotherapy-informed psychiatric team care as a pragmatic model for improving assessment, treatment planning, safety, adherence, functioning, and recovery in resource-constrained health systems. The review synthesizes clinical, service-delivery, psychotherapeutic, psychopharmacological, neurodevelopmental, public mental health, and quality-improvement literature, with particular attention to relevance for Thailand, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and other low- and middle-income settings. Across the evidence, effective care depends less on isolated specialist activity and more on coordinated multidisciplinary practice, culturally responsive formulation, structured risk assessment, family involvement, stepped psychosocial interventions, task-sharing, medication monitoring, and reliable follow-up. Psychoeducation, motivational interviewing, parent-mediated intervention, behavioural activation, cognitive and interpersonal approaches, and recovery-oriented care can be adapted for routine psychiatric settings when supported by clear protocols, supervision, referral pathways, and quality-improvement methods. The review argues that psychotherapy-informed team care provides a clinically realistic bridge between biomedical psychiatry and person-centred recovery, particularly where specialist services are scarce. Strengthening this model may improve early detection, therapeutic engagement, safety, adherence, and functional outcomes while supporting more equitable and sustainable mental health systems.