Is it not the time for Palliative Care to rope in?
6% of Kerala population suffers from mental illness: CAG report
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A performance audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India has concluded that Kerala, where 5.86% of the population suffers from mental illness, compared with the national average of 2%, is precariously perched in the mental health care sector.
The Kerala government is yet to formulate a plan to implement the objectives of the Mental Health Policy of 2000, the report, which was tabled in the Assembly on Tuesday.
The report said the state was one of the leading consumers of alcohol and that it had a suicide rate of 25.2 per lakh population against the national average of 10 lakh.
The government hasn't conducted an "epidemiological survey to identify mentally-ill people in the state as recommended by the National Human Rights Commission", it said. "Non-utilization of central funds, inadequate infrastructure facilities, shortage of manpower and inadequate monitoring of mental health care facilities," are the other shortfalls pointed out by the report.
Between 2005 and 2010, when the Left Democratic Front government was in power, the state received Rs 9.98 crore from the Centre for mental health care facilities of which Rs 4.07 crore remained unutilised as of March 2010. The entire money was shown as utilised but the anomaly came to light in the audit.
The report dwelt on the role of the State Mental Health Authority (SMHA), which is mandated to advise the government on all matters of mental health. Between 2005 and 2010, the SMHA sent proposals for starting diploma courses in psychiatric nursing in the Medical College Hospital here besides rehabilitation centres under district panchayats and for increasing the staff strength for starting impatient treatment in the new phsyiatric ward of the MCH here. But the state government had not acted on any of these proposals as on August 2010, the report observed.
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It is important and innevitable to address the issue of Mental Health as it may be curable in many of the cases. It can be thought of starting local level counselling centers attached to the Health Cetres with the active participation of PRIs for identifying and giving proper treatment to such pateints. It is also necessary to educate the society to have more matured and serious approach to affected persons. Each member of our society should have the patience to atleast see them closely and read thier sentiments inorder to bring a "change" in their life..lets us hope something due to this CAG report..Thanks to Mr Hamza and Dnip Care for uploading the matter
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