Mentally ill deportees slow mental health development

Nov 18, 2012 News

Guyana’s mental health challenge is greater “than our small economy can manage,” said Minister of Health Dr. Bheri Ramsaran, yesterday. However, he disclosed that earnest efforts are being made to address this dilemma.
But those efforts are currently being slowed by the deportation of derelicts from the United States of America.
“We are exporting our youths and America is re-exporting to us, derelicts,” said the Minister who announced yesterday that “we have a lot more people coming back who have no roots in the society and who are potential mental cases. We need to be looking at how many of them are coming back.”

Ms Patrice Ladler hands over a copy of the UNFPA Report to Minister Cheri Ram saran in the presence of (from left) Dr. Janice Woolford, Dr. Shamdeo Persaud and Dr. Shanti Singh.

Post partum depression among new mothers has been listed as another factor that lends to mental disorder among the population, said Minister Ramsaran. He revealed that about 50 per cent of new mothers suffer from mental illness with about two per cent of these actually trying to cause their newborns to suffer fatal injuries.
Such cases are however not easily identifiable, since according to the Minister “we are resource poor. Our response to mental health challenges is very weak so we need to put mental health on the front burner and remove it from the back burner,” said the Minister.
He disclosed that currently about 15 per cent of the population is plagued with mental illnesses, a state of affairs which amplifies the need for trained medical practitioners.
The public health system is currently furnished with two veteran psychiatrists and a few younger doctors are their understudies. The area of mental health is also supported by rotating Cuban doctors and a handful of nurses, according to Minister Ramsaran. Operating privately in this field, too, is Dr. Frank Beckles.
Given the limited quota of mental health professionals, the Ministry is forced to encourage a practice of “visiting clinics” which in fact calls for the need for a wider cross-section of these operatives.
This has caused the Ministry to start looking at ways to incorporate dealing with mental health problems at the primary health care level, but according to the Minister, fixing the problem does not only mean training more psychiatrists.
Ensuring that mental health is addressed at the primary health care level will in fact require that such a programme is included in the nursing schools’ curriculum.
“That is where we are so the nurses will be coming out with a full package. Just a few weeks back we advertised for another batch of people to come and train in mental health…that is not the way to go because we are training them after they are done training. However the aim is to ensure that it is integrated into their way of thinking,” he asserted.
According to the Minister it is important to sit the patients down and interact with them. “We need to train more nurses and we need to have the people at the health centres who are not intimidated and want to ‘football’ the patients.”
The Health Ministry is seeking to collaborate with its partners to devise a mental health strategy intended to help identify cases of mental health early, Dr. Ramsaran said.
The Minister’s deliberations were forthcoming yesterday at a Cara Lodge, Quamina Street, Georgetown, venued colloquium spearheaded by his Ministry in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
The event, which represents the first in a proposed series of colloquiums for the media, was aimed at sensitizing media operatives on a range of health issues in order to solicit their support to raise awareness among the populace.
The issues amplified at the forum included: Sexual practices and challenges among youths and young adults, Emergency Obstetrics and Newborn Care, Safe Motherhood and the way forward, the Millennium Development Goals Four and Five as well as the process of medical evacuations was highlighted.

Media operatives at the forum yesterday

Presentations were made by Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Shamed Persuade; Programme Manager of the National AIDS Programme Secretariat, Dr. Shanty Singh; Director of Maternal and Child Health, Dr. Janice Wool ford and UNFPA’s Mr Derive Patrick. UNFPA’s Country Representative Patrice La Fleur also presented remarks at the forum following which she presented a copy of the 2012 UNFPA’s State of the World Population Report to Minister Ram saran.