diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 918c5dab..12b518c1 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -16,3 +16,6 @@ _trial_temp*
 /.tox
 /.python-version
 /htmlcov
+
+.vscode/
+.idea/
diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index 34c4c06f..e8990b33 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -6,6 +6,14 @@ this case, the [Apache Software License v2](LICENSE).
 
 ## Preparing your development environment
 
+Sygnal depends on the `psycopg2` database adapter for PostgreSQL. 
+You may need to install development headers for Python and libpq.
+For example on Debian/Ubuntu distributions these can be installed with:
+
+```bash
+sudo apt install libpq-dev python3-dev build-essential
+```
+
 ### Create a virtualenv
 
 To contribute to Sygnal, ensure you have Python 3.7 or newer and then run:
diff --git a/changelog.d/196.doc b/changelog.d/196.doc
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..a9542d04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelog.d/196.doc
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Update CONTRIBUTING.md to recommend installing libq-dev. Contributed by Tawanda Moyo.