Mental Health Issues to be Integrated in Primary Care

The Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health (BALM) and the Family Planning Association of India (FPAI) have signed a MoU on Monday.

As part of this agreement, training for handling mental health issues will be offered by the FPAI. Sujatha Natarajan, president, FPAI, said such programmes would help empower women to tackle mental health issues and make safe reproductive choices.

Vandana Gopikumar, director, BALM, said that the aim of the initiative, which will train 30 community workers initially, was to identify mental issues among people and then treat them at a primary level.

"Lack of both human medical resources and access to mental health care are huge concerns," she said. "The participants will be trained to identify mental health issues in people. General practitioners will also be trained to handle these people, to treat them in the early stages of their illness when intervention is easier."

Mental health interventions will be initiated by six general practitioners.




Source: Medindia