PPA to propose mental health bill

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine Psychiatric Association (PPA) will soon come  up with a draft bill on mental health to fortify efforts to address the growing mental problems in the country.

In a health forum organized by the Philippine College of Phycians, former PPA president Felicitas Soriano said they hope to come up with the proposed bill in October and then they will look for a legislator who could sponsor it in Congress.

“We have been pushing for a Mental Health Act for 15 years now and we have attempted four times (but nothing happened).  We have a group that is now reviewing our old bills and maybe in October we can finalize it,” said Soriano, who is also the head of the Psychiatry Department of the Veteran’s Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City.

The PPA is proposing that mental health be devolved to the local government units. This entails training of local health workers on how to handle psychiatric cases and the provision of free medicines for mental cases in the health centers, just like in tuberculosis.

Soriano has underscored the need for such a law amid the growing number of Filipinos with mental problem due to poverty and “uncertainty” of the future.

“If we have what we call ‘between life and death,’ there is also ‘between life and psychosis.’  For the Filipino people we really need a mental health (law),” she added.

There is no data on the mental health situation in the Philippines due to lack of reporting system but the rise in cases was observed in clinic consultations.

This as PPA Research Committee head Dinah Nadera said the government had defined “two national breakthrough goals for mental health promotion and prevention of mental illness” as of April this year.

First is the integration of mental health in general health care or the “mainstreaming” of mental health. This means that even general practitioners are being trained to handle common mental problems, including depression and psychosis.

The other is the development of “standards for acute psychiatric care in hospitals.”

Nadera said  that people rarely see psychiatric facilites that are usually stand alone and there are hardly psychiatric wards in general hospital settings except for big and training hospitals.

“The target is going to the direction of the creation of acute psychiatric care — allocating psychiatric beds in general hospitals. Goals are until 2016, it’s not going to be the entire Philippines, but 80 percent of primary health care physicians in selected provinces. That’s the target,” she added.

Nadera maintained these goals would soften the impact of the World Health Organization’s prediction that by 2030, depression will be in the top three disorders afflicting the people globally.

Worldwide, four of 10 leading causes of disabilities and death are related to mental health.