‘Mental health units to come up in 28 districts of Karnataka’

K.A. Ashok Pai, chairman of Karnataka State Mental Health Task Force, said on Saturday that district mental health units will be started in the remaining 28 districts of the State.

Addressing presspersons here, Dr. Pai said that each would be set up at a cost of Rs. 2 crore each and they were expected to be set up by 2016.

These units were currently functioning in 12 districts of the state.

He said that sex education should be made compulsory in high schools and Pre-University colleges and its curriculum had already been designed. Teachers of biology, sociology, psychology, would be trained as special lecturers for teaching sex education.

Dr. Pai said that though exact statistics were not available, independent surveys had indicated that two per cent of the population suffered from psychosis (schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, paranoia, etc) and six per cent from neurosis (anxiety, phobia, hysteria, obsessive compulsive disorder, somatoform disorders).

Four per cent of the population suffered from personality disorders (drug abuse, deviant sexual behaviour, psychopathic and sociopathic tendencies) and two per cent of the population suffered from behaviour disorders secondary to organic brain damage (mental retardation, cerebral palsy, autism and multiple disability).

Hence 14 per cent of the population needed mental health services in the country.

Karnataka, with a population of 6 crore, had nearly 75 lakh persons needing routine mental health service.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) had identified two important diagnostic criteria among the first ten killer diseases. Universal guidelines for mental health services required the need of one mental health professional for each 1,00,000 population.