Marking the World Mental Health Day on the 10th October, the Commission organized a seminar on 'Human Rights and Mental Health Care in New Delhi. In his inaugural address, Mr. P.C. Sharma, Member, NHRC said that mental health is not being accorded the same priority as the other health problems in the country. Mentally ill people are also entitled to basic human rights. This needs to be understood by all sections of society, including the medical fraternity and the public authorities. Resources are woefully inadequate and the situation remains grim with about only 43 mental hospitals and institutions which by and large continue to remain ill equipped in terms of manpower, infrastructure and financial resources in spite of the NHRC having made several recommendations and guidelines in this regard to the concerned authorities both in Centre and States under a mandate given to it by the Supreme Court in the year 1997. He said that after conducting visits and survey of many hospitals in the country, the NHRC experience has been that the condition therein is far from satisfactory and these remain a dumping ground for mentally ill people as some of these are not even proper hospitals but are functioning only as mental asylums constructed during the colonial era.
Mr. Sharma said that given the kind of life styles, the people are leading these days, the problems relating to the mental health are going to increase manifold and the present infrastructure is not fully geared up to tackle this. According to an estimate he said that about two crore people need mental health care in the country.
Mr. Satyabrata Pal, Member, NHRC said that the Commission while holding a series of regional consultations with State Governments and other stakeholders for preparing a report for the Universal Periodic Review on the state of human rights in the country found that during their presentations no specific reference was made to the work done by them on mental health care.
Mr. Justice B.C. Patel, Member, NHRC spoke on the subject of mental health care within the existing legislative and policy framework and the need for their review keeping in view the realities of changing times.
Dr. L.D. Mishra, Special Rapporteur, NHRC said that time has come to focus on the solution rather than the problems as these are plenty in the mental health care.
Ms. Sujaya Krishnan, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, accepted that despite the best intentions, the mental health care has been a low priority for the government. She expressed the hope that in 12th Plan more funds will be allocated to mental health in the total health budget.
Several prominent speakers addressed different sessions of the seminar. They included Prof. R.C. Deka, Director, AIIMS, New Delhi, Dr. Sameer Malhotra, Consultant Psychiatrist, Fortis Hospital, Dr. Sameer Parikh, Consultant Psychiatrist, Max Healthcare,
Dr. S.P. Agarwal, Secretary General, Indian Red Cross Society, New Delhi, Prof. Amita Dhanda, NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, Dr. Rajesh Sagar, Additional Professor, Department of Psychiatry, AIIMS, Dr. Jitendra Nagpal, Sr. Consultant Psychiatrist, Institute of Mental Health and Life Skills Education, Moolchand Medicity, Dr. D. Nagaraja, former Director, NIMHANS, Bangalore, Dr. Tapas Kumar Ray, Founder Secretary, SEVAC, Kolkata and Mr. J.S. Kochher, Joint Secretary (Training), NHRC. The students of psychiatry departments of Delhi University, Maulana Azad Medical College and AIIMS also attended the seminar and participated in the discussions.
It was unanimously agreed that an immediate intervention is needed to ameliorate the cause of several mentally ill people languishing at Chamatkari Hanuman temple in Chindwada District of Madhya Pradesh.
Some of the other major points which emerged during the deliberations are as follows:
o A time-bound targeted approach with well defined tasks should be framed for the medical fraternity, centre and state governments functionaries and civil society to meet the growing challenges of mental health problems in the country;
o Given the shortage of trained psychiatrists in the country, general practitioners can be and should be trained with a special modular course in psychiatry as has been experimented in Jammu & Kashmir;
o Every District should have a centre to provide care for few days to mentally sick persons before sending them back to their respective places for further care;
o Monitoring and evaluation of ongoing schemes and legislation necessary for effective care of mentally ill people;
o Peer councilors should be trained at school and college level to check the problem of mental sickness at the initial stages;
o Focus should be on primary care than at secondary and tertiary stages in order to check the occurrence of various types of mental disorders;
o Intensive media campaign for building awareness on mental illness should be accorded importance;
o Discrimination between mental and physical problems should stop;
o Convergence of all the ideas and efforts in the mental health care is the need of hour for achieving success;