BENGALURU: The Lok Sabha on Friday took up the Mental Healthcare Bill, 2016, which makes provision for protecting, promoting and fulfilling the rights of persons in delivery of mental healthcare and services.
Further discussion on the Bill will be taken up on Monday. The Bill was passed by the Rajya Sabha in August 2016.
On the mental healthcare front there is a yawning 70 per cent treatment gap in Karnataka. Under the National Mental Health Programme, district mental health programmes are implemented. Karnataka did not gear up well towards the implementation of National Mental Health Programme initially although now things are changing, assured Rajani H M, deputy director, mental health, Department of Health and Family Welfare.
She told Express, “From 2004 to 2015, only four districts had implemented the district mental health programme. The National Mental Health Survey said that the lifetime prevalence of mental illness is around 13.9 per cent.
This is higher than non-communicable diseases like diabetes and hypertension. In 2016-17, we have expanded the programme to all districts. We have trained 3,000 doctors in PHCs to identify mental illness and start treatment.”
“There are 25 psychiatrists working under district mental health programme. A few districts like Yadgir, Ballari, Chamarajanagar and Kalaburagi where we don’t have psychiatrists in the programme, we are assisted by those in medical colleges and district hospitals,” she added.
In 2014, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had also inaugurated ‘Mano Chaitanya’ and ‘Manasadhara’ schemes to provide free treatment, counselling and rehabilitation for people with mental disorders. Of the 18 Manasadhara centres, four are non-functional now due to poor footfall.
Under Mano Chaitanya, on select Tuesdays, district mental health programme psychiatrist or district hospital psychiatrist, goes to taluk hospitals and caters to the mentally ill. Manasadhara centres are for rehabilitation of chronically mentally ill. They are taught candle making, match making and computer skills, depending on their ability.
“Some of the Mano Chaithanya clinics are not that great, so we are including Indian Psychiatric Society in such clinics,” said Rajani. Manochaitanya programme runs in 139 taluk hospitals.
This year, `1.94-crore has been allocated for Manasadhara scheme, which is an increase from the previous two years.
Launched in October 2014, it first got a budgetary allocation of `3.4 crore because it was a new programme. Thereafter it got only `1.01 crore for the next two years.