As the Centre and States pass buck on each other over inadequate infrastructure and poor utilisation of funds for mental health programmes, the mentally-ill patients across the country are at the receiving end.
The WHO predicts that 20 per cent of India’s population will suffer from some form of mental illness by the year 2020. At a given time, there are nearly ten crore mentally ill patients in India.
According to the Government, at least 35 lakh Indians need hospitalisation on account of mental illnesses.
The country is also facing acute shortage of mental health professionals: There are about 4,000 psychiatrists, 1,000 psychiatric social workers, 1,000 clinical psychologists and 900 psychiatric nurses in the country. There are only 40 institutions and less than 26,000 hospital beds.
The deplorable situation in mental health care services in the country was discussed thread-bare at a meeting of state health secretaries on mental healthcare organised by the National Human Rights Commission on Friday in the national capital.
While the States blamed the Centre for cut as well as delay in fund release, hampering the functioning of the programme, Union Health Secretary, Bhanu Pratap Sharma lamented that the States were not submitting the Utilisation Certificate of funds to release them.
Health Joint Secretary Anshu Prakash added the National Mental Health Programme (NMHP) was not receiving the due attention from the States. He stressed on setting targets and fixing responsibilities to ensure that there is affirmative action on improving the mental healthcare.
The meeting noted that while Southern States like Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka had done much better to ensure services to the beneficiaries, situation in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh remained unimpressive.
Justice Cyriac Joseph, NHRC Acting Chairperson, observed that the real problem was not the absence of a law but the failure to implement the existing ones. He also suggested that in view of general inhibition of the people in visiting mental healthcare hospitals, the states should consider opening a Psychiatric Wing in the existing district hospitals.