The World Health Organization has published a guide to support the delivery of psychological self-help interventions.

Psychological self-help interventions: delivering self-help for individuals, featuring Step-by-Step and Doing What Matters in Times of Stress gives practical guidance for planning, adapting and delivering self-help support.

The guide focuses on two WHO-developed interventions:

• Step-by-Step, a digital self-help intervention for adults with depression
• Doing What Matters in Times of Stress, a stress management intervention based on acceptance and commitment therapy

The guide is mainly for programme managers, implementers, supervisors and frontline helpers working in health, humanitarian and community settings.

It explains how self-help can be delivered with or without guidance. Guided self-help may include brief regular support from a trained and supervised non-specialist helper.

WHO says self-help approaches can help expand access to evidence-based mental health support, especially where services are limited or people face barriers to accessing care.

This resource may be useful for professionals and organisations interested in community-based, digital or low-intensity psychological support.