'Govt to revamp National Mental Health Prog'

New Delhi, Apr 15: Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss has expressed concern over the tardy implementation of Mental Health Programme and said it would soon be revamped. Dr Ramadoss told UNI that the National Mental Health Programme was not performing well and implementation was a major problem. He said the Government was taking measures to revamp the programme.

The National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) has been entrusted the task of reviewing the ongoing national mental health programme and submit recommendations. He said once the proposal for revamping of the programme was ready it would be implemented soon.

''The entire process may take a few months time,'' he said.

Mental health has emerged as a major problem in the country with nearly 75,000 people committing suicide for varied reasons, including mental disorder and depression. Globally, an estimated 877,000 people die by suicide every year.

About seven to eight per cent of Indian population is facing some sort of mental problem, of which over 1.5 per cent need special care. The problem has been compounded as the number of trained medical professionals/ psychiatrists capable of dealing with the problem was totally inadequate to the proportion of population requiring the help.

To deal with the problem the government is planning to provide basic training to doctors so that they could understand the basic symptoms of any mental disorder and provide necessary counselling and treatment to the people at the district level.

Moreover, psychiatrists complain about the stigma attached to the mental diseases as many people feel that if it was known that they were seeking treatment for mental disorder people might brand them as ''pagal''.

Mental illness among majority of people go undetected and no adequate attention and treatment is provided. Many a times people, especially those residing in rural areas, go to traditional healers or are put in institutions not manned by experts. A majority of women patients were abandoned by their families and even after they get well after treatment, the families refuse to accept them forcing them to lead a life of loneliness, the experts pointed out.

Another emerging problem was the rising incidence of depression and suicide among youngsters due to stress caused by examinations.

Many of them commit suicide after failing in examinations or due to fear of failure. Though a number of steps have been taken recently to reduce the stress among students, especially those undertaking board examination, a lot was still required to be done, said experts involved in counselling of students.

At present the country has just 37 institutions dealing with mental health care facilities. But more were required to meet the rising number of mental health problems in the country which is undergoing demographic transition and fast changing lifestyles leading to a lot of stress among various age groups.

According to the World Health Organisation, mental, neurological and behavioural disorders are common in all countries and cause immense suffering as people with these disorders are often subjected to social isolation, poor quality of life and increased mortality.

These disorders are the cause of staggering economic and social costs.

Estimates made by WHO in 2002 showed that 154 million people globally suffer from depression globally and 25 million people from schizophrenia; 91 million people are affected by alcohol use disorders and 15 million by drug use disorders. A recently published WHO report shows that 50 million people suffer from epilepsy and 24 million from Alzheimer and other dementias.

In addition to the above figures, many other disorders affect the nervous system or produce neurological sequelae. Projections based on a WHO study show that worldwide in 2005, 326 million people suffer from migraine; 61 million from cerebrovascular diseases; 18 million from neuroinfections or neurological sequelae of infections.

Number of people with neurological sequelae of nutritional disorders and neuropathies (352 million) and neurological sequelae secondary to injuries (170 million) also add substantially to the above burden.

One in four patients visiting a health service has at least one mental, neurological or behavioural disorder but most of these disorders are neither diagnosed nor treated. Mental illnesses affect and are affected by chronic conditions such as cancer, heart and cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and HIV/AIDS. Untreated, they bring about unhealthy behaviour, non-compliance with prescribed medical regimens, diminished immune functioning, and poor prognosis.

Cost-effective treatments exist for most disorders and, if correctly applied, can enable most of those affected to become functioning members of society. Barriers to effective treatment of mental illness include lack of recognition of the seriousness of mental illness and lack of understanding about the benefits of services. Policy makers, insurance companies, health and labour policies, and the public at large all discriminate between physical and mental problems.

Most middle and low-income countries devote less than 1 per cent of their health expenditure to mental health. Consequently mental health policies, legislation, community care facilities, and treatments for people with mental illness are not given the priority they deserve, lamented WHO.

UNI