New approach to addressing mental health – Health Minister

Apr 25, 2009 News

A paradigm shift looms within the public health sector as it relates to the way mental health services are offered to the general public.
According to Health Minister, Dr Leslie Ramsammy, mental health programmes should be introduced as an everyday part of the local public health programme and social welfare programme in Guyana.
The Minister’s disclosure came yesterday when he addressed a gathering at a master implementers’ workshop held at the Health Ministry’s Brickdam headquarters.
Minister Ramsammy pointed out that thus far mental health has been a peripheral part of the public health delivery services people have come to expect. However, he did noted that they have become accustomed to merely accessing services as it relates to infectious diseases like HIV, malaria and dengue, as well as chronic diseases for diabetes and heart diseases and not that of mental health.
But while people have an expectation of support in terms of mental health they however have no expectation that they could come for the regular services and obtain mental health assistance as well.
“We are changing that and indeed in people’s mind and the policymaker’s mind, mental health belongs to a specialised service and that there should be specialised personnel and so on. We want to change that paradigm – that is one of the pillars of the mental health strategies we introduced last year.”
However, the Minister cautioned that in dealing with every mental health problems the health Ministry cannot work alone but instead require a multi-sector support.
He cited the Ministries of Education, Youth, Sport and Culture, Human Services, and Education along with the Religious bodies and Non-Governmental Organisations as entities that must support the Health Ministry’s efforts.
And according to the Minister, “With our various programmes we enforce this idea,” even as he emphasised that the introduction of Cognitive Behavioural Intervention for trauma in schools (CBITS) is no less a health programme than the foot-care or HIV programmes.
In essence CBITS which represents a mental health programme which the ministry will eventually unleash countrywide will be “part of the service that we want to provide to empower our families and communities, the Minister asserted.

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