AN international medical group will on Thursday start renovating Harare Central Hospital Mental Health Unit wards in an effort to decongest the facility.
BY SILENCE CHARUMBIRA
Médecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) psychologist Emmerson Gono said the project has been necessitated by lack of mental health facilities at primary health centres across the country thereby congesting Harare Central Hospital and other tertiary health centres.
Speaking on the sidelines of a mental health talk at MSF offices in Harare yesterday, Gono said the project would also see the establishment of satellite clinics in Harare.
“We have hired multi-discipline psychiatric health personnel that will be working with people living with mental challenges starting with Harare before we go to other areas. We have realised that primary health centres are not providing mental health assistance and this has then congested larger facilities like the Harare Central Hospital Psychiatric Unit,” said Gono.
“For areas outside Harare, we are also creating a hotline which can be used by those in need of assistance.”
He said MSF was also coming up with a programme where experts would visit mental health patients at their homes to ensure that they do not suffer relapses after being released from hospital.
“Our nurses will be making appointments with patients and we would be visiting them at their places of residence and monitor their progress while also providing education to their immediate families on how to deal with their conditions,” said Gono, who is also the mental health team leader at MSF.
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Gono said mental patients continued to be segregated in communities because of lack of knowledge on the causes and types of mental illnesses and how to treat them.
He said there was continued violation of the rights of mental health patients in their respective homes because of misconceptions regarding mental illness.
“Mental patients, despite their condition, still have rights and have to be consulted whenever there are issues that concern them. You will find that sometimes decisions are made on their behalf, medical health is forced on them when they in fact still have a right to choose,” Gono said.
“If they participate sometimes it is therapeutic. We also have instances where they are isolated as punishment, which is wrong. Isolation should only be as a way of managing and as part of therapy.”
He said there were also cases of patients being overdrugged resulting in them spending close to 48 hours sleeping.
During the talk, it was noted that mental health problems could increase in the coming years due to extensive substance abuse by youths and economic challenges that had resulted in high stress levels in many adults. Eneti Siyame, the mental health manager in the Ministry of Health and Child Care, said there had been challenges with accessing mental health drugs at different institutions.She said the problems had since been resolved and the situation was now back to normal.
