WHO tips on managing severe mental disorders
Kampala. The World Health Organization (WHO) has released new guidelines urging health workers dealing with Severe Mental Disorders (SMD) of bipolar, moderate to severe depression, schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders among adults to also look out for physical health conditions.
The guidelines recommend the use of both medicines and behavioural change interventions like regular exercises and balanced diet to control tobacco and substance use, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes mellitus, HIV/Aids and other infectious diseases among people living with SMD.
“...people with SMD are more likely to engage in lifestyle behaviours that constitute risk factors for non-communicable diseases such as tobacco consumption, physical inactivity and consuming unhealthy diet,” the WHO guidelines published last week, state in part.
Health workers are, however, asked to take into account potential interactions between drugs used in managing mental disorder-related physical illnesses with psychotropic medications, as well as possible contra-indications.
More vulnerable
The life span of people with severe mental disorders is 10-20 years shorter than that of the general population owing to the non-communicable and communicable risky factors they are exposed to, according to WHO.
“While these guidelines do not include a comprehensive list of physical health conditions, but have rather focused on those that seemed most important and for which there was evidence available, the physical health conditions (and their risk factors) addressed are those that have been shown to increase morbidity and mortality in people with SMD,” the document explains further.
Commenting on the new guidelines, Dr David Basangwa, the Butabika National Referral Mental Hospital executive director, said these will help them improve healthcare for people with severe mental disorders.
“It will be easy to adopt them since we have already incorporated that [the guidelines] in our plans,” Dr Basangwa said in a telephone interview yesterday.
The recommendations also come at a time when Uganda is experiencing an upsurge in the number of mental disorders received at Butabika National Referral Mental Hospital, with majority of the patients admitted being university and high school students suffering from alcohol and drug addiction or abuse.
Currently, there are 850 patients at the hospital compared to 750 last year, according to Dr Basangwa.
He said the hospital receives 20 new mental patients daily (7,300 annually) compared to between 10 and 15 previously.
