Agago district struggles to provide mental health services

Mental health services in the Agago region are in short supply. This is owing to a scarcity of psychiatrists as well as insufficient financing.

The Catholic-owned Dr Ambrosoli Memorial Hospital Kalongo provides comprehensive mental health services to the district. For the previous five fiscal years, the hospital has consistently received and treated over 600 patients seeking mental health care.

New cases, relapses, and transfers from Gulu Regional Referral Facility (GRRH) and Butabika Hospital in Kampala to a hospital closer to the people are among them.

During an interview with URN, Godfrey Smart Okot, the Facility Executive Director, said that the hospital lacks a psychiatrist and qualified people to care for mental health patients.

He goes on to say that they frequently run out of vital drugs for mental health patients, despite receiving none from the district or the government. According to Okot, the hospital does not charge any mental health patients for the treatments they get because they are completely funded via their accounts.

They have now resorted to development partners and well-wishers for assistance.

According to Samuel Ojok, the Agago district Health Assistant, the most common mental health problems in the district include PTSD, trauma, psychosis, epilepsy, and suicide.

Alcohol and substance abuse, domestic violence, poverty, land wrangles, and HIV, according to Jimmy Ocaka, a psychiatrist working for a private health institution in Kalongo sub county, are among the causes of mental illness.

He stated that if such issues are not addressed or treated, they will lead to suicide.

The bulk of the clients arrive with mental illness, according to John Otiki Jovine, a health worker at the ART Clinic in Kalongo sub county, yet the institution lacks no psychiatrist to care to them.

He said that a nine-year-old adolescent girl committed suicide after failing to obtain counseling from the health institution.

According to Pavel Reppo, Executive Director Finemind, in collaboration with the Rotary Club of Munyonyo in Kampala, they have collaborated with the Agago district local government and educated 28 counsellors in the region to handle mental health.

An eighteen-year-old teenage girl in Kalongo sub-county who had recently been abandoned by her mother told URN that she had considered suicide until a private therapist intervened after she had tried in vain to get help from official health facilities.

Only 43 psychiatrists are employed in Uganda’s Mulago and Butabika National Referral Hospitals, as well as four regional referral hospitals that provide mental health care.

According to Derrick Kiiza, Executive Director of Mental Health Uganda, a scarcity of psychiatrists in the country’s mental health institutions has hampered the provision of mental health services and prevented some clients from receiving proper care.

Six psychiatrists are stationed at Butabika National Referral Hospital, while the rest are assigned to Mulago National Referral Hospital and four Regional Referral Hospitals in Gulu, Arua, Kabale, and Mbarara, according to Kiiza.

Due to the absence of professionals deployed in such institutions, Kiiza noted, an evaluation they did in government facilities offering mental health care revealed a high degree of aggression, provocation, abuse, insults, and inhumane treatment of individuals with mental disorders.