Mental health in the community

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Mental health in the community

• Global Forum For Community Mental health
• WHO Geneva
• 30th-31st/May/2007
• By Malembo Makene
• 
  
• 
  Tanzania

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Title What does community mental health mean in
diverse scenario?

• Are to present Experience on providing community
  mental health service in poor hard to reach rural
  area- Mtwara region Tanzania in Africa continent.

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Introduction

• Whatever the cause and types of mental illness ,
  community mental health aims to promote on access
  to needs and rights also improve lives of larger
  group of people who are in need (mentally ill
  people) through involving different actors
  including mentally ill people themselves and
  their families.
• However, community mental health is mainly
  focusing on integration of larger societies in
  rural area on identification and management of
  mentally ill people as well as prevention of the
  illness within their setting communities with
  limited resources and cost effective.

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Where we are working

• BasicNeeds has been implementing community mental
  health activities in Tanzania one of the poorest
  country under the African continent.
• The programme focus on poor and marginalized
  people in two region namely Mtwara and
  Dar-es-salaam out of the 21 regions within the
  country, where the lives of poor mentally ill
  people and their carers is indefinable (they not
  able access to treatment, social and economic
  services)

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How we have delivered the service

• Establishing and support mental health outreach
  clinics in collaboration with district health
  authority, local authority at ward and village
  level, including trained generalist health
  workers on mental health and community
  volunteers. The outreach clinics are
  established where there are no health facilities.
  
• Integrate primary mental health care into primary
  health care through training generalist health on
  mental health care, review meetings with health
  management teams at national, region and district
  level as well as using the available resources
  within the area including human resources and
  buildings.
• Working with different stakeholders at community
  level including community based organizations,
  traditional healers and community Volunteers in
  patients identification, referrals and follow-up.
  Community volunteers are the key people who
  identify mentally ill people in the community,
  doing home follow-up for patients progress, data
  collection and support in outreach clinic
  service.

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cont

• Support partner organization to integrate
  stabilized mentally ill people onto social and
  economic activities through self help and user
  groups.
• Consult mentally ill people and their carers on
  the whole process of access to treatment, social
  and economic inclusions

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People reached out,

• Through community mental health we have reached a
  total of 8517 mentally ill people and people with
  epilepsy in five districts for 3 years of the
  programme implementation.
• Out of people reached out, 3432 are mentally ill
  people with different illness including
  Schizophrenia, Bipolar disorders, acute confusion
  states, Depressions, substance abuse and
  alcoholism including dementia, and 5085 are
  people with epilepsy that include male, female
  and children.

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What has worked?

• District councils have shown cooperation and
  started allocating resources for community mental
  health activities.
• Increase demand of the services to reach more
  people in the community.
• Districts have started adapting the community
  mental health and development module through
  supporting mental health supervision activities
  at lower health facilities (dispensaries and
  health centers).
• Partner organizations have started to integrated
  stabilized mentally ill people onto their plans
  including in income generation activities.