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Rumbidzayi Zinyuke Manicaland Bureau
Experts have urged the Government to adopt new strategies of detecting and treating mental illness to reduce morbidity caused by mental health issues.
Dr Monica Singh, a clinical psychologist who is part of the team of doctors currently conducting free surgeries at Mutare Provincial Hospital under the Zim-India Vocational Training Team mission, said there were a lot of undetected cases.
“I am here as a volunteer, but during this mission, I have taken time to evaluate some of the patients we received and I found there is a lot of depression among the people,” she said.
“I wanted to find out about the state of mental health care and how much is being done to address it. There is a big gap. It is not always about treatment but also about prevention. There is need to implement some preventive measures.”
Dr Singh said Government should use the available structures where village healthcare workers can be used to reach people in the remote areas.
According to the Ministry of Health and Childcare, at least one million people in Zimbabwe could suffer from some form of mental and neurological disorders of varying intensity.
However, nearly two thirds of persons with a known mental disorder never seek professional help mainly due to stigma, discrimination, neglect and limited knowledge.
“Our aim is to reach the people beyond reach and see how we can extend mental health care to all communities,” said Dr Singh.
“This is where key people trained to offer health care in the villages should come in.
“They can be trained as multi-purpose workers so that they can reach out and pick up mental health cases that need urgent intervention.”
Dr Singh said the model has been very successful in India where the mental healthcare has been combined with their polio programme.
She said they have managed to identify a number of people with mental illness through interviews that were done during their door to door campaigns.
Dr Singh emphasised the need to educate the public on mental illness to eradicate the stigma surrounding it.
“People think mental illness is a result of something bad that they did, but they don’t know that depression happens due to various reasons,” she said.
“It can be genetic. It can also be due to lack of a biochemical in the body, the loss of a loved one or some kind of a traumatic incident that the person has gone through. For people to understand this, there has to be very good mental health strategies.”
Online Reporter