Community-based support key for mentally sick

Feb 26, 2013

Clinical mental health services can help mentally sick people to live stable lives, the WHO has disclosed.

By Innocent Anguyo

Clinical mental health services, when supplemented by tailored community-based support services, can help mentally sick people to live stable lives, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has disclosed.

Community mental health services (CMHS) support or treat people with mental disorders in their own vicinities, instead of conventional psychiatric hospitals.

Generally, CMHS refers to a system of care in which the patient's community – not a specific facility such as a hospital – is the primary provider of care for people with mental illnesses.

The goal of CMHS often includes much more than simply providing outpatient psychiatric treatment.

In a statement, the country representative of WHO, Joaquim Saweka noted that community-based mental health care can reduce the risk of patients entering a cycle of acute care, temporary accommodation, unemployment, homelessness, crime and possible imprisonment.

Some of the support initiatives include supported housing, psychiatric wards of general hospitals, local primary healthcare, fitness centers, self-help groups and community mental health centers.

 “Community-based support services can sometimes be sufficient to meet the on-going mental health support needs of people with mild to moderate mental illness,” Saweka says.

“This would enable public mental health services that are acutely overstretched to focus primarily on those with more severe mental illness who need both clinical and non-clinical support.”

WHO states that community mental health services are more accessible and effective, and are likely to have fewer possibilities for the neglect and violations of human rights that are often encountered in mental hospitals.

Though mental health is included in National Minimum Health Care Package of Uganda, Saweka notes that Uganda still needs to invest more in community-based service delivery since it is integral to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

“Mental health has far-reaching impacts on productivity, poverty and influences many other health outcomes. There is also growing evidence of the cost-effectiveness of mental health services,” he explains.

However, he is quick to disclose that services for people with mental illnesses are under-resourced, inadequate and inequitably distributed within and between countries especially in Africa.

70% of countries in Africa spend less than 1% of the total health budget on mental health and 90% have less than one psychiatrist per 100 000 population .

While 14% of the global burden of disease is attributed to mental health disorders, 5% of neuropsychiatric conditions occur in Africa.

Unfortunately, 75% of those affected in many low-income countries like Uganda do not have access to the treatment they need.

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