Training people in communities to identify those who may be mentally ill is one of the ways healthcare can be made more accessible in poor countries, according to the Programme for Improving Mental Health (Prime).
Prime lead researcher Crick Lund will present his research recommendations to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) spring meeting on Wednesday.
Lund is a UCT professor of public mental health.
Prime has come up with a number of innovative ways to help get mentally ill people diagnosed and be given access to treatment.
One of the ways will be to train people to identify those in their community who could be mentally ill and who needs help. The system is already in use in Nepal.
Lund will present key recommendations for setting up, costing and evaluating mental health care plans in low- and middle-income countries at the meeting.
“There is an urgent global need to address mental health as a public health and development issue,” said Lund.
Prime is currently conducting research in South Africa, India, Nepal, Ethiopia and Uganda.
“Through our work in Prime, we have developed processes and tools for ministries of health, NGOs and other researchers to use to implement and scale up mental health services in other low- and middle-income countries,” said Lund.
Planning tools such as the Prime situation analysis tool are also one of the ways to ensure low-cost mental healthcare.
The Prime situation analysis tool provides information on the context, structures and systems to support integration of mental health care into the primary health-care system.
Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi’s spokesperson, Joe Maila, said Lund is also part of the minister’s advisory committee on mental health.
“Some of the challenges in delivering effective mental health services to low-income residents are the inadequate numbers of professionals working in rural areas and in poorer areas generally,” said Maila.
He added that the stigma associated with mental disorders and pressures on general health workers also made it difficult for them to include mental health in their work.
“There is also a lack of comprehensive community-based care that leads to unnecessary hospitalisations and the fact that many general hospitals do not yet have wards to admit psychiatric patients,” said Maila.
Spokesperson for the South African Depression and Anxiety Group Cassey Chambers said in South Africa only 25 percent of people with a mental illness get treatment.
“The estimated cost to see a private psychiatrist is about R1 500 and a psychologist is about R800 per session. This is often unaffordable for many South Africans,” said Chambers.
Cape Times