| …intervening measures being streamlinedAs much as 15 per cent of the population is affected by mental health issues, primarily in the form of depression, a state of affairs that has caused the Ministry of Health to review its approach to deal with such ailments.This assertion was made by Minister of Health Dr Bheri Ramsaran, who revealed during an interview that the Ministry is now seeking to include mental health treatment at the primary health care level.Health Minister, Dr Bheri RamsaranHis remarks were forthcoming as he responded to concerns about the recent incident at the West Demerara Regional Hospital which saw a 35-year-old man plunging to his death from the Male Medical Ward of the medical facilities, two Fridays ago.The man, Vishal Ramotar, of Hubu, East Bank Essequibo, was a chronic renal failure patient who was admitted some two weeks prior. Reports are that the man was suffering immense pains and was barely able to breathe on his own.He alluded to his belief that while the patient was suffering from a severe illness, his caregivers did not recognise that there could have been mental health implications.“We are going to be looking into that. An investigation into the death has started and I think we will definitely have to advise them on systems that should be put in place. We are going to be looking into that, but right now we are awaiting a report on that incident and what really happened,” the Minister said.He noted that such occurrences are not unique to Guyana, but have been known to happen even in big developed medical centres around the world. However, he revealed that the Health Ministry has in place a Mental Health Strategic Plan that has elements of training, even as he made reference to the fact that “there are very few people who would walk into a room and say I’m specifically looking to get assistance. So we need to get our primary health care workers to be able to address this before it becomes an acute problem”.According to the Minister, the main thing on the Ministry’s agenda is to ensure that health workers are able to recognise early that a patient needs counselling.“It is like cancer; early screening is important you don’t wait for it to get to an advanced stage before you start dealing with it,” the Minister stressed.Health workers, according to Dr Ramsaran,jerseys from china, must realise that there is a link between physical illnesses and the possibility of mental illness, a fact that is well known in medicine and should be reflected in the care of patients. In recognising the absence of this level of care, the Minister said that there is an urgent need to strengthen mental health awareness in the training of nurses, medexes, and other health care workers.In further addressing the need for counselling of patients suffering from mental ailments, he stressed that it is of importance that health workers seek to observe patients carefully. Referring to the West Demerara Hospital incident, he speculated that the nursing staff had taken Ramotar’s behaviour to be normal, adding that “in other words while they are good people, they are not sensitised to the link between a chronic disease that might be terminal and mental illness.”It was for this reason, he noted, that efforts were made during the recent mental health week observance to emphasise that there is a crucial need for mental health care to be expanded to the level of primary health care. Those at primary health care facilities, he explained, must be able to identify cases of mental illness, a condition that could only be discovered by those who are trained and re-trained to know that mental health issues are prevailing.With this state of affairs in mind, Dr Ramsaran said that “we are about to introduce training for nurses and medexes as part of our training curricula…This is going to expose them to mental health issues and that is actually being crafted.”Added to its efforts, the Ministry of Health recently advertised for candidates to join its mental health nursing programme. This programme, the Minister noted, is designed to train nurses in the area of mental health techniques and awareness for working at the primary health care level and not merely at the country’s hospitals.“Hopefully it will be integrated into the consciousness of our nursing staff that mental health is not only managed in a specialised hospital like that at Fort Canje or the Clinic by Dr Bhiro Harry, but it is everybody’s business, and they have to be alerted by the signs, tensions, pressure and even suicidal tendencies of patients,” Minister Ramsaran added. |
