‘Mental health pandemic must be addressed’

MANILA, Philippines — The government, the education sector and families must immediately address what appears to be a “mental health pandemic” that is exacerbated by the dismal public psychiatric care system, officials warned at a Senate inquiry yesterday.

The Senate committee on health, chaired by Sen. Bong Go, conducted a hearing to review the implementation of the Mental Health Act of 2017 and pursue the resolution filed by Sen. Raffy Tulfo on the reported corruption in the National Center for Mental Health (NCMH).

Go expressed alarm over the disturbing figures from the Department of Health (DOH) and the NCMH on the number of suicide incidents in the last few years.

He said there were 2,147 attempted suicides reported in public schools and 404 students took their own lives during the school year 2021-2022.

Go said that in 2019, the NCMH received 712 suicide-related and 2,413 mental health-related calls, and recorded 2,810 actual suicides.

The following year, there was a surge of 2,841 suicide-related and 8,176 mental health-related calls as well as 4,420 actual suicides.

In 2021, the suicide-related calls nearly doubled to 5,167 and mental-health related calls rose to 9,730.

“Until now there are many reports of suicides or attempted suicides in schools,” Go said.

Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, who chairs the Senate committee on education, found the surge in suicide attempts and actual suicides very disturbing.

“What I’m driving at is, are we reaching, are we successful in thwarting calls, suicide-related calls? What are we doing? The pandemic of mental health is already here,” Gatchalian told the inquiry.

“One life (lost) is too many,” he said.

Go deplored reports of almost inhuman treatment of patients at the NCMH and other government facilities despite the allocation for the mental health sector in the national budget.

He said the Department of Health (DOH) has P1.86 billion for psychiatric medicine and P12 million for a mental health hotline and awareness campaign for this year. The amounts reflected the increases compared to the previous years.

Tulfo warned erring NCMH officials that they would be held accountable for allegedly squandering the budget intended for the medical needs of their patients to corruption.

“National Center for Mental Health is not the mother of all irregularities. It is the dinosaur of all corruption because corruption inside NCMH has been happening for ages,” Tulfo said.

Albert Domingo of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. said there are now benefit packages being offered for mental health out-patients that include consultations with psychologists, psychiatrists or neurologists.

Domingo said confinement is not necessary in most cases.

“We have programs for in-patients…suicides can be prevented but we can save (patients) even before confinement,” Domingo told the panel.

He admitted the government could not “capture” all cases but all Filipinos are covered by PhilHealth.

He said starting July, mental health consultations would be free in select urban centers nationwide to be expanded to the health centers in the entire country.