Focus on training more psychiatrists

This week, experts called on government to increase the number of psychiatrists, medical and clinical officers if the increasing load of patients with mental illness is to be handled.

Dr Juliet Nakku, the executive director of Butabika National Referral Mental Hospital, said the facility is currently overwhelmed with patients, with the soaring number of mental patients overwhelming the few available psychiatrists.
“Butabika is designated as a 550-bed hospital but we have double the number of patients in admission, more than 1,000 and this is a challenge to the institution,” Dr Nakku said on Tuesday in Kampala.

To appreciate better the doctor’s point, let us put the mental health challenge of Uganda into perspective. Last year, the Ministry of Health released a report that left many in shock. Out of every three Ugandans, the report said, one is struggling with poor mental health.
The report brought to the fore the fact that constant sadness, lack of sleep at night, sudden fear that cannot be explained, severe mood swings, engaging in fights and experiencing violence could all point towards mental illness.

Some of the stress factors triggering mental health challenges, the report said, include drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, poverty, head injuries resulting in loss of proper cognitive functioning, and stress arising from work, school and personal relationships.

Mental illness has for a while been neglected, yet the prevalence is on the rise. According to the Annual Health Sector Performance report for the 2022/2023 financial year, the number of outpatient attendances due to mental health conditions went up from 455,153 in 2021/2022 financial year to 520,614 in 2022/2023 financial year.

We appreciate that majority of the regional referral hospitals can now admit patients with mental illness, this is to supplement the national referral hospital in Butabika. But government should ensure that we have trained people to deal with mental illness even at the Health Centre I.
We agree with Dr Nakku when she says government should upgrade the psychiatric nurses’ teaching schools in the country.
“Lack of support to train the teachers is a major hindrance to development in this area because it is a specialised discipline and not everyone can teach it,” she noted.

With many people now aware of signs of mental illness, government needs to make it easy for them to seek treatment. One need not to travel hundreds of kilometres to Kampala to get help from an already overwhelmed Butabika hospital. 
Let us strive to ensure that it is easy for them to seek help from trained health workers, right from the lowest health units.