The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Call to make mental health programme more people-oriented

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Monday, Dec 14, 2009
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Tamil Nadu

Call to make mental health programme more people-oriented

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: The mental health programme needs a revamp to make it more people-oriented than professional-centric, R. Srinivasa Murthy, former professor and head of psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore, said on Sunday.

Delivering the fourth Prof. M. Vaidyalingam memorial oration, Dr. Murthy advocated innovative approaches using tools of Information and Communication Technology such as mobile phones and community radio to address the three key gaps that existed in the current delivery of health care to the mentally ill – better awareness, shorter distance (to the nearest facility) and continuity of care.

Citing an assessment conducted by the Indian Council for Marketing Research on select DMHP centres in the country, Dr. Murthy said the district mental health programme had been reduced to a mockery in the absence of monitoring and lack of clinical material to measure outcomes from the data generated across the 127 districts. “The DMHP may be in operation but the services and the outcomes it provides are far removed from the stated objectives of the programme,” Dr. Murthy said.

Apart from finding that the quality of service was poor in 50 per cent of the surveyed centres, the report stated that professional expertise to handle difficult cases and training or refresher courses were lacking. Very few centres had proper teams, staff or mechanisms to stock medicines regularly, the report stated.

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