The National Human Rights Commission organised a day-long Meeting of State Health Secretaries on Mental Healthcare in New Delhi on the 4th September, 2015. The aim of the meeting was to bring together the senior officers of Centre and States to clear bottlenecks, if any, in providing mental health care.
Addressing the gathering, Justice Shri Cyriac Joseph, Acting Chairperson, NHRC said that Right to Mental Health is a human right and the Centre and the State Governments have a Constitutional obligation to protect and promote this human right. Having a new law on mental health care may be useful but there are already enough laws. Non-implementation of these laws causes problems. He said that though, intellectually, there is a concern about the attention the mental health care should receive but this does not take us to change of mindsets, attitude and change of heart. The NGOs' role in the rehabilitation of mentally-ill patients needs to be recognized and encouraged by the Governments to address this serious concern.
Justice Cyriac Joseph also said that it would be, perhaps, more appropriate that the Governments considered opening a Psychiatric Wing in the existing District Hospitals instead of setting up specialized psychiatric or mental health care hospitals, which people avoid visiting given a general social inhibition.
Earlier, Shri Bhanu Pratap Sharma, Union Health Secretary said that the Centre will be upgrading more institutions as 'Centers of Excellence' for Mental Healthcare. The new Mental Health Bill will be placed before Parliament in the coming Winter Session. He said that the feedback available with the Union Health & Family Welfare Ministry is that the States were not submitting the Utilization Certificate of funds to release them. However, he will get reviewed the problems, if any, in this regard.
Shri S.N. Mohanty, Secretary General, NHRC gave an insight into the efforts made by the Commission towards improvement of Mental Healthcare and said that the Commission is of the firm view that its guidelines and recommendations will yield positive results.
Shri Anshu Prakash, Joint Secretary, Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare said that the National Mental Health Programme (NMHP) is not receiving the due attention from the States. They need to set targets and fix responsibilities to ensure that there is affirmative action.
He said that the huge shortage of human resources, including medical and para-medical staff, lack of infrastructure and general awareness about the mental health continues to remain a problem. Nobody talks of co-morbidity of other diseases with mental illness, which cannot be handled either by a psychiatrist or a psychologist alone without inter-sectoral coordination. The same cooperation is needed among various ministries and institutions for mental health care. Private sector must also contribute in building infrastructure. Medical students, while doing MBBS, should be exposed to the subject of mental health.
The NHRC Members, Justice Shri D. Murugesan and Shri S.C. Sinha chaired the different sessions having participation from State Health Secretaries, mental health experts, academicians, Heads of Mental Health Institutions, civil society representatives and officers of the NHRC including Special Rapporteurs.
Some of the suggestions, among others, emanated from the discussions were as follows:
1. All General Medical Practitioners must be provided training on basic mental health care.
2. Train civil servants regarding the District Mental Health Programme to help them integrate it with National Rural Health Mission and other flagship programmes having a health component such as ICDS.
3. Livelihood of the cured persons must be linked to their treatment.
4. The rehabilitation mechanism under District Mental Health Programme requires to be strengthened.