M F AHMAD
Daltonganj, Oct 10: Community mental health camps are on in Palamu said noted psychiatrist Dr Ashish Kumar of the mental health hospital in the MMCH Daltonganj today on the occasion of World Mental Health Day on Monday.
“In the camp, we ask people to have stress management and life skill training. It is all to abort suicidal thoughts. There is also a Gate Keeper Approach to dissuade one from having suicidal thoughts. Doctors apply CPR (cardiac pulmonary resuscitation) when there is a case of a heartbeat sinking. While for mental illness, we carry QPR which is loving queries, persuasion and then referring to treatment,” he said.
Dr Ashish Kumar has some very useful recipe for the maintenance of treatment for mental illness at the community health centre or the primary health centre.
He said, “Let every community health centre has a shelf of psychotropic medicines and its apt handlers too who should know how to bail out a visitor coming over there with complaints about stress, anxiety and worry.”
The All India mental illness per one lakh population is 10.6 while it is 11.1 per cent in Jharkhand which calls for methodical and intensive care of the mentally ill people here.
The doctor agreed there is an acute shortage of psychiatrists in Jharkhand as the ideal position is 3 psychiatrists per one lakh of the population.
Dr Ashish said, “Take my case. I am at MMCH Daltonganj. I am to look after Garhwa and Latehar districts as well. I frequent Garhwa district more than Latehar as here in Garhwa there are more cases in comparison to Latehar district.”
About patients coming over to the mental health hospital in Daltonganj, he said ” In the first 6 months of this year, 8,000 patients have visited us here in Daltonganj.”
Post-Covid mental illness has registered a rise as he said complaints about functional neurological deficits pour in much, say 25 percent more than what it was in the non-Covid period. Even during the bouts of several lockdowns in the first wave of the Covid pandemic, 13,000 patients sought medical intervention for their mental illness.
“The year 2019-20 saw 16,600 patients seeking treatment here,” added Dr Ashish.
He went on to say, “More and more patients having mental illness visit us between March and July. I understand it is because migrant workers come home for Holi etc and they are ridden with mental illness.”
“Weeks lying between December and January see a dip in the number of mentally ill patients here,” informed Dr Ashish.
Notably, a Bhoot Mela is held in Palamu’s Haidernagar where hundreds of men women and girls come to get rid of the ghosts.
When asked, Dr Ashish said “I will not make any comment on it. However, I can tell there is acute transient psychosis ailment mostly in women and girls and it is self-limiting and it goes away too. Such persons who visit this kind of location are subject to various kinds of rituals and since their ailment is self-limiting they get well in due course of time and then they take their cure as a boon of this Mela. They visit us when they lose money and their illness remains as it is when afflicted with dissociative disorder etc.”
More patients from the rural of Palamu come to us than the urban and to put it in ratio it is 80 percent from the rural side and 20 percent from the urban side said Ashish adding urban ones prefer consulting psychiatrists in other towns for obvious reasons.
