Daily Times

PESHAWAR: Psychiatrists have demanded of Provincial Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) to make adequate increase in health budget, to address the mental health issues and other fatal diseases.

Addressing at a news conference in connection with the ‘International Mental Health Day’, at press club, Head of Psychiatry Department Khyber Medical College and Khyber Teaching Hospital Peshawar, Prof Dr Sayed Mohammad Sultan said the mental health is not supposed to be a major disease, but it could be prevented by proper and timely diagnosis and treatment.

He also called for set up special mental health treatment facility in the province.

He said that severe anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsion disorder, phobias, and drug abuse as major causes of mental disturbance and distortion. He furthermore informed that the pre and post pregnancy complications, domestic problems, violence, weak family system, and lack of awareness, also main reason behind the growing mental health issues among the women as well as children. Flanked by registrar psychiatry department, Dr Imran Khan, Dr Robina, Dr Sher Ayub, and others, Dr Sayed Sultan said the developed countries had prioritized the health sector, and allocated 30 to 35 per cent of the total budget.

However, he said the country in generally, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government in particularly, is allocated only 2 per cent of the total annual fiscal budget for the health, sector, out of which only less than one per cent allocated funds for addressing of mental health issues. He called upon the government to give special attention towards diseases which were being caused mental health issues, and to make appropriate increase in the health budget.

Dr Sayed Sultan, who is also President of Pakistan Psychiatric Society and President of SAARC psychiatric society, has expressed concern over deficiency of physicians to combat with these diseases. He informed that currently 400 to 450 psychiatrists for the total population of the country, ratio of one psychologist for 10,000 patients. He also said that no proper facilities were available for treatment of mental health patients at major hospitals in the province.

According to rough estimate, he reveled that approximately seven million people with ratio of 33 per cent were suffered from the disease due to mental anxiety and depression across the country. He said that the children and old-age people were also suffered from this disease, saying that senior citizens above age of 65 years mostly lost memory that was called dementia disease, with ratio of five per cent, which is penetrating with growing age.