FDC women ask govt to recruit parish counsellors for mental health

The Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) Women’s League has asked government to institute counsellors at each of Uganda’s more than 10,595 parishes to reduce on the country’s mental health burden.

The league’s chairperson Farida Nangozi said that women go through a lot of challenges which require constant counselling short of which leads to mental health issues.

“There must be trained counsellors that are fully paid by the government at each parish so that women can get counseling services. We may reduce the numbers we have seen in Butabika Hospital,” Ms Nangozi noted during their visit to Butabika National Referral Hospital, a health facility for people with psychiatric disorders.

The opposition FDC (party) Women’s League March 14 held belated International Women’s Day celebrations through donating essentials to vulnerable mothers at Butabika Hospital and St Stephen's Dispensary and Maternity HC III in Luzira, Kampala.

Ms Nangozi explained that March is a month to celebrate women and that their donation was in solidarity with the women in Butabika Hospital.

“These are the people we feel need counseling and when you donate to them, they feel you are part of them and may heal easier because they know that even the world out there knows about their condition,” Ms Nangozi said.

The deputy executive director of Butabika Hospital, Dr Byamah Mutamba, who received the items on behalf of the facility appreciated the FDC women for their good spirit.

“All of us in this room are all vulnerable to mental health and we don’t take it lightly that you thought about us and we want to assure you that the nursing team is made up of senior ladies…So, we are guaranteed that the donations will reach the target beneficiaries,” Dr Mutamba said.

In an engagement with the media early this year, the executive director of Butabika National Referral Mental Hospital, Dr Juliet Nakku, decried overwhelming numbers of psychiatric patients in Uganda.

Dr Nakku observed that Covid-19 effects such as the loss of loved ones and loss of jobs led to depression and stress, which played a major role in the increased cases of mental health disorders in the country.

In the last two years before Covid-19 struck, the 550-bed capacity hospital would receive between 900 and 950 patients, which has now increased to between 1,000 and 1,050, currently in admission at the facility, according to Butabika Hospital records.