In the light of the death of Satnam Singh Mann, a mentally unstable student from Bihar who was found dead under mysterious circumstances at the Mental Heath Centre in Thiruvananthapuram, the government has initiated an ambitious project to improve the conditions of the three mental health centres in the state.
The highlight of the proposal is the focus on increase in the number of staff at the mental health hospitals. Staff shortage has been one of the biggest handicaps of the public mental healthcare.
The proposal looks at creating 250 additional posts at three government mental health centres in the state. This includes 16 new posts of psychiatrists.
As of now the state has only 52 such posts. Of these 12 are lying vacant.
There will be an increase in the number of psychiatric social workers, psychiatric nurses, psychologists and other paramedics also.
Meanwhile, on the infrastructure side the project looks at a number of measures, including new mental health wards in the hospitals. The project is estimated to cost around `15 crore. “The project has been introduced in the wake of the Satnam Singh incident. We have initiated talks with the Medical Council of India to increase the number of PG seats.
“We hope that within three years we will be able to overcome the shortage of psychiatrists and fill all the vacant seats”, Dr Prabha Chandran Nair, Psychiatrist, Directorate of Health
Services, Kerala told ‘Express’. As of now for a population of over three crore, there are only 15 PG seats for psychiatry in the government sector.
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