Optimum treatment and necessary healthcare facilities towards the mentally sick people is very vital to facilitate them to get back their normal life, speakers at a view-sharing discussion said here yesterday.
To this end, they viewed collective effort is urgently needed as all the mental diseases excepting the schizophrenia are curable and so social awareness alongside positive attitude to the patients is very vital for their early recovery from mental sickness.
The views-sharing meeting on mental illness was held at the seminar hall of Civil Surgeon Office. Action on Disability and Development (ADD), a UK-based development agency, and District Badhan Protibandhi Sangstha (DBPS) jointly organized the meeting in association with Christian Blind Mission (CBM).
Civil Surgeon Dr Shahidul Islam and Deputy Civil Surgeon Dr Azizul Islam addressed the discussion as chief and special guests respectively with DBPS President Sohel Rana in the chair.
Director of Rajshahi Chamber of Commerce and Industry Shariful Islam, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry Department of Rajshahi Medical College Hospital Dr Moyeen and Lecturer Tanzir Ahmed Tusser also spoke.
In his keynote presentation, Mustaque Ahmed, Project Officer of ADD, said mental illnesses are an under-recognized public health problem in Bangladesh.
“Awareness about mental illness and acceptance of treatment are very low due to social stigma and superstition”, he said adding psychosocial care of mentally sick and disaster affected people constitute a major challenge for the health and the social welfare systems of the country.
He told the meeting that some 16.01 percent of the country’s population is suffering from various mental illnesses but the nation has only 150 physicians to manage huge patients.
Taking advantages of the situation, Mustaque Ahemd said, some quacks and opportunist groups have been working as money- makers through exploiting the patients. He added that the mal-practitioners are pushing the patients into endangered condition.
He added that mental health needs to be brought under the surveillance system incorporating with other non-communicable diseases. The state level treatment facilities for the mentally disorder patients is very limited, he said and underscored the need for uplifting the scopes to cope with the situation.
Civil Surgeon Dr Shahidul Islam said integration of mental health services with primary health care has become the most viable way of narrowing the treatment gap and ensuring that common people benefit from mental health promotion.
He said all the drug addicts especially the intravenous drug users always suffer from mental sickness as the drugs damage their body strengths and the central nervous system.
Dr Moyeen Uddin said the mental patients are the most vulnerable sections of the society. They are subjected to repression and oppression frequently and stressed the need for bringing them under proper treatment.
He put emphasis on strengthening the grassroots level healthcare related activities for proper detection of the mentally sick persons for their proper treatment.
-BSS
