NHRC's Northern region review meeting on Mental Health <br>

The National Human Rights Commission organized the Northern Region review meeting on mental health at Agra in collaboration with the Institute of Mental Health and Hospital, Agra, Uttar Pradesh on the 9th April, 2010. This was the fifth and the final regional review meeting on mental health.
The States and Union Territories covered during this review meeting included Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Chandigarh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
Inaugurating the meet, the Acting Chairperson, NHRC, Mr. Justice G.P. Mathur said that the issue of mental health needs to be tackled in a manner which promotes acceptability and reintegration of the mentally ill persons into the mainstream of the society. He said that the mental health is the capacity of an individual to express and adapt a range of emotions and demands which sometimes may affect the way he feels and thinks about himself and the society.
Explaining to the participants various aspects of 'mental health' and types thereof, Justice Mathur said that mental health is a human right, and there is a need to provide treatment to mentally ill persons with the same dignity, decency, courtesy, kindness, empathy and sensitivity as others.
Referring to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Retarded Persons 1977, UN Declaration of Disabled Persons 1975, and the Supreme Court judgements in Rakesh Chandra Narayan Vs State of Bihar and Chandan Kumar Banik Vs State of West Bengal, Justice Mathur said that the spirit behind them is to upgrade the mental health care and modernize it. In this context, some of the important observations and suggestions made by Justice Mathur are as follows:
" There is a need to focus on preventive, curative community based approach to deal with mental health care;
" Proper medical care with humane approach necessary towards persons admitted in mental hospitals to instil confidence amongst them;
" Need to overcome the shortage of psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, nurses and paramedic staff in the field of mental health;
" The State Governments and the Universities should expedite the process of granting affiliations to the courses on mental healthcare;
" Health officials and State Governments need to address the issues like allocation of more funds to the mental health institutions for infrastructure development;
" Delegation of more powers to the Directors of mental health institutions.
Justice Mathur expressed hope that recommendations emerging out of the regional review meetings would go a long way in identifying the problems and their solutions in the interest of people suffering from mental disorder.
Chairing the meet, NHRC Member, Mr. P.C. Sharma said that in India, physical and mental health is a challenging issue, and mental health in particular is more enigmatic. There are many questions on the issue that need to be answered.
The modern day life related stress is one of the reasons that the number of mental health problems are increasing; whereas the paraphernalia to treat these problems is falling short to meet the requirement. He said that though some progress has been made in improving the mental healthcare scenario following interventions by the Supreme Court, National Human Rights Commission and National Institute of Medical Health and Neuro Sciences, Bangalore, yet the by and large picture is that the society is sufficiently, neither sensitive towards the mentally ill persons, nor aware of their problems. Number of times it has been seen that mentally ill patients are disowned by their family members and are not accepted back even after their recovery.
Mr. Sharma said that the outcome of discussions during regional mental health review meetings organized by the Commission in Ranchi, Pune, Guwahati and Chennai prior to Agra have been useful in understanding the challenges ahead, but disappointing in the sense that NHRC's recommen-dations are neither being implemented properly, nor there is any urgency seen on the part of the States to do so.
Mr. Sharma said that a number of serious deficiencies have come to light through the reports of NHRC's Special Rapporteur, Dr. Lakshmidhar Mishra, who visited mental hospitals in the country. There are lot of shortcomings at the district and block level. It needs to be ensured that the rehabilitation councils at state level are in place and also working properly. He pointed out the need for providing mental health care to the prisoners.
Mr. Sharma said that it is the need of hour that an effective strategy is worked out to meet the challenges of mental healthcare in order to know the reasons behind the growing number of mental health problems and ascertain the status of mental health care services.
Earlier, welcoming the dignitaries and the participants, Prof. Sudhir Kumar, Director, Institute of Mental Health and Hospital, Agra lauded the role of NHRC in monitoring several psychiatric hospitals throughout the country and expressed hope that deliberations at the meeting would pave the way for further development of state of art services for mentally ill patients.
NHRC Secretary General, Mr. K.S. Money, Special Rapporteur, Dr. Lakshmidhar Mishra, Director (Research), Dr. Y.L. Tekhre,
the Directors of Mental Hospitals, Professors of Psychiatry in the Medical Colleges, senior officers dealing with Mental Health in the region, concerned State Human Rights Commissions, officers of Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India and
other stakeholders attended the meeting.