New Delhi, February 10th, 2010

The National Human Rights Commission is holding North-Eastern review meeting on Mental Health at Administrative Staff College, Jawaharnagar, Guwahati, Assam tomorrow. NHRC Member, Mr. P.C. Sharma will inaugurate the meeting. The States to be covered in this review meeting include Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, Manipur, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Sikkim.

During the meeting the points of discussion will include:
" Overall conditions in mental hospitals,
" Status of implementation of District mental health programme,
" Status of proposals of mental hospitals and District hospital pending with State Government for augmenting facilities as well as granting permission to carry out teaching courses,
" Modified steps proposed.

The Directors of Mental Hospitals in the region, senior official dealing with Mental Health in the State, officials of Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Government of India, Professors of psychiatry in the Medical Colleges in the region, State Human Rights Commission concerned and representatives of Medical Council of India will participate in the meeting.

The review meeting is in continuation with NHRC's involvement of monitoring of the mental health care system in the country. In this context, Commission has made a number of recommendations to all the concerned authorities. The review meetings of various States divided into five zones of the country are being held in this context. Prior to this, the review meetings of mental health care system in Eastern and Western zones have already been held.

The Commission has observed that though the financial resources and infrastructure of most hospitals has improved several areas of functioning and quality of mental health care is still remains critical.

Member Sharma has said that the health care system in the country in general and mental health care in particular suffers from a number of serious deficiencies. He has said that for a country of over one billion 43 mental hospitals in the Government Sector are not just enough.

The capacity of existing hospitals needs to be enhanced with an adequate number of psychiatrists, clinical psychologist and psychiatric nurses having orientation to shift from custodial care to therapeutic care approach for patients in mental hospitals and they must be equipped with sufficient medicines.

Mr. Sharma said that morbidity on account of mental illness would overtake cardiovascular diseases as the single largest risk in India by 2020. In this context, he has said that each hospital and the State Government must draw up action plans for protecting the human rights of mentally ill persons.

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