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"We need more psychiatrists"

Staff Reporter

Meet discusses shortcomings in the country

KODAIKANAL: More psychiatrists were needed to meet a growing demand in the country; students must be encouraged to choose this field as the country was facing an dearth of psychiatrists, said K. Meer Mustafa Hussain, Vice-Chancellor, Tamil Nadu Dr. MGR Medical University.

He inaugurated a continuing medical education programme for psychiatrists organised by Indian Psychiatric Society (South Zone) here on Friday.

More branches in psychiatry must be developed for specialisation and to give better treatment to patients. Many specialists were heading for England where the crisis was even worse. England had one psychiatrist for 90,000 people, compared to one for 35,000 people in India.

Fifteen per cent of Indians were suffering from mental problems and one per cent of them only were admitted to hospitals for treatment. What was distressing was that there were only 36 Government-run mental hospitals in the country, he said.

Stressing the need of psychiatric unit in general hospitals, he said such units were more accessible, easily approachable and less stigmatised.

With 2.5 lakh new psychiatric cases coming up with serious mental disorders every year, we have only 10,000 psychiatrists, 600 psychologists, 2,000 psychiatric social workers and 20,000 beds. On the other hand, 70 million people were mentally ill in the country and over 10 per cent of them required urgent health care, he said.

"Extend scheme"

He appealed to the Madurai Medical College, a nodal centre for District Mental Health Programme for Madurai, Theni, Ramanathapuram and Virudhunagar districts, to extend the scheme to other districts also. Ten more districts would be covered in the State under this programme, he said.

Dindigul Collector R. Vasuki stressed the need for meditation and yoga to keep the mind calm.

Anxiety, tension and stress were haunting the mind of people every day owing to change in work culture.

I. Rama Subba Reddy, IPS president, cautioned that continuing education progamme, essential to update knowledge, would become compulsory for doctors in the future.

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