Mental Health Week: Not Enough Psychiatrists in India

There are more than 5 million chronically disabled people due to mental illness. Every year more than one lakh deaths due to suicide. Sammer Parikh one of the known Psychiatrist said-“There are 5–6 million people who are chronically disabled due to acute mental illness. One lakh people die every year of suicide, many in their productive years. One in four persons will develop a psychiatric disorder in their life. Depression will be the second leading cause of burden of disease in the world by 2020. Eighty percent of the patients do not get any treatment,”

Dr. Parikh at Launching the Delhi chapter of the Indian Association of Private Psychiatry on Mental Health Day : “The reason to initiate this scientific body is to ensure a structured, validated flow of information and provide comprehensive and scientific education to people.”

R.C. Jiloha Senior psychiatrist said- “Psychiatric illnesses cause untold suffering to the patient as well as the family and are a huge drain on the economy. The myths about mental illness, lack of awareness, stigma against mentally ill, non–availability of treatment and the apathy of the policy makers are important hurdles in the delivery of treatment to the sufferers,”

According to Psychiatrist Sandeep Vohra: “The available mental health services are unevenly distributed and most of our mental hospitals are dilapidated and conceptually obsolete. We suggest more accessibility to mental health services, affordability, adaptability and assessment of performance at the ground level through monitoring. There are few psychiatrists for the huge India population. What is worse is the fact that nearly all of these psychiatrists are based in the cities.”