Nearly three years after it was formed by the State government to supervise psychiatric hospitals, nursing homes and other medical centres catering to mentally ill patients, the State Mental Health Committee will finally meet for the first time on Friday. The committee is meant to be an important link between the government and mental healthcare facilities on ground.
On February 5, The Hindu had reported how the eight-member committee had not met even once. The committee comprises five government officials and three psychiatrists.
On the agenda for Friday’s meeting is increasing the patient-to-psychiatrist ratio to the ideal 100:1 at the State’s four mental health hospitals. Presently, the Thane hospital has only six psychiatrists for over 1,800 patients, while the Nagpur hospital has only three psychiatrists for over 650 patients.
The committee will also discuss revision of licence fees for private psychiatric nursing homes and hospitals, currently ₹1,000 and ₹500 for renewal, to ₹5,000 and ₹3,000 respectively. It will take up the issue of illegal ‘psychiatric institutes’, which are mostly large rooms where mentally ill people are lodged for a fee. “Often, families use these ‘institutes’ to get rid of mentally-ill relatives. These so-called institutes are hard to track down as they aren’t part of a doctors’ referral system. They function by directly being in touch with the public. This needs to be tackled,” a committee member said.
Dr. Sadhana Tayade, Joint Director, Directorate of Health Services and the State government representative on the committee, confirmed the meeting has been scheduled on Friday and will be chaired by Additional Chief Secretary Vijay Satbir Singh. “The main agenda is an overview of the State’s mental health facilities. Secondly, we will also be discussing activities for World Health Day on April 7, which has depression as its core theme.” She said the meeting was earlier scheduled for February 16. but was postponed as some members were unavailable on that day.
