‘State needs own policy on mental healthcare’

PATNA: Bihar needs to develop its own health policy in order to move in right direction for future healthcare priorities covering mental health needs, state health minister Mangal Pandey said on Saturday.

The minister highlighted the needs to have healthy ‘manas’ (Human resources) and ‘mind’ for future development of the state during the national conference on ‘Partnership to scale up mental healthcare in Bihar’.

The event was organized by the Centre for Health Policy (CHP) at

Asian Development Research Institute

(ADRI), in collaboration with state health and social welfare departments, Bihar Human Rights Commission and Bihar State Legal Services Authority.

CHP-ADRI director P P Ghosh highlighted the need for accelerating mental health interventions by the government and judiciary. Four technical sessions were also held during the conference.

In the first technical session, Suresh Bada Math, professor of

psychiatry

at National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore, spoke on innovative solutions for implementation of Mental Healthcare Act, 2017. “There is no need for conducting a new study to estimate the prevalence of mental illness as the National Mental Health Survey conducted by NIMHANS already provides a high prevalence of mental illness in the country, which is currently estimated to be around 10%,” Math said.

In the second session on ‘Methods to strengthen the national mental health’, Dr Soumitra Pathare, director of Centre for Mental Health Law and Policy at Indian Law Society, Pune, presented the work of a project called ‘Atmiyata’. It aims at community mobilization through training self-help groups to connect person with a

mental disorder

.

In the last session, Dr K V Kishore Kumar, director of Banyan and the Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health, highlighted the need for the establishment of aftercare services (rehabilitation and reintegration) for persons with a mental health condition.