District hospitals across the state lack prescribed 10-bed IPD for mental patients

Indore: The district mental health programme (DMHP) prescribes for an exclusive 10-bed in-patient facilities at district level, but not a single district hospital in Madhya Pradesh has it.

Further, the district hospitals in the state lack human resources like psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, and psychiatric nurses under DMHP for treatment of patients with mental illness.

Under the National Mental Health Programme (NMHP), all districts of Madhya Pradesh have been sanctioned District Mental Health Programme (DMHP), a component of NMHP.

DMHP aims to provide outpatient services, assessment, counselling, psycho-social interventions, continuing care, and support to persons with severe mental disorders, drugs, outreach services, ambulance services among others. These mental health clinics are called- Mann-Kaksha in Madhya Pradesh.

Nodal, Mental Health Programme, National Health Mission (NHM), MP, Dr Sharad Tiwari told TOI, “We have reserved four beds as day care facilities in district hospitals across state for providing treatment to mental health patients.” “These are however not exclusive wards”, added Dr Tiwari.

Similarly, there are only 30 clinical psychologists and only 22 psychiatrists available for 52 district hospitals in Madhya Pradesh. There are no psychiatric staff nurses.

The DMHP however provides for one each of clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychiatric staff nurses at district level.

Dr Tiwari said, “There is a lack of psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric staff nurses across the country. So, we have trained medical officers, staff nurses to run mental health clinics in district hospitals.”

The extent of lack of human resource can be understood by the fact that in a union ministry of health and family welfare assessment for 12 states, Madhya Pradesh has only 0.05 psychiatrists per lakh population, worst in the category. As for clinical psychologists, the state has 0.02 per lakh, against Rajasthan which has 0.01 per lakh.

“The services like free distribution of medicine, increasing awareness among the community, increasing early diagnosis and treatment through training and skilling of staff along with grass root health workers is underway”, said Dr Tiwari.