By Staff Writer, Dodoma
MENTAL illness in Dodoma region has decreased from 35 percent to at least 31 percent during a period between 2020 and 2022, according to the relevant statistics.
The encouraging revelation has been unveiled by the Acting Dodoma Regional Medical Officer (RMO), Dr. Nelson Bukuru in his remarks during observation of this year’s World Mental Health Day, held in Dodoma Capital City.
Mental illness, also called mental health disorders, refers to a wide range of mental health conditions — disorders that affect your mood, thinking and behavior. Examples of mental illness include depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, eating disorders and addictive behaviors.
He said the development has been propelled by a substantial increase of the relevant health workers and the experts at the Dodoma-based Mirembe Mental Health National Hospital (MNHMH), the development which resulted into smooth metamorphosis in the service delivery towards the patients in question.
Together with that, Dr. Bukuru added that there’s a potential increase in the rolling out of key awareness towards the public over how best to cheat the ‘disturbing’ mental health disorder.
However, despite the significant decrease in the spread of the illness across the region, Dr Bukuru informed that the region, which shelters the country capitals leads for having many epilepsy patients than any part of the country.
“Currently, Dodoma has at least 19,000 epilepsy patients, equivalent to 79 percent of the population that have been affected by the seizure disorder illness across the country,” he unveiled.
Speaking for his part, the Deputy Health Minister, Dr Godwin Mollel challenged the health workers at the Mirembe Mental Health National Hospital to work diligently and dispense the right therapies to the patients of mental illness.
Dr. Mollel, who graced the event to mark this year’s World Mental Health Day urged the health workers to be very vigilant at identifying the patients at different stages of the mental disorders and serving them accordingly.
“The government will continue to equip the hospital (Mirembe) with the needed modern equipment and medicines in order to allow the facility to heighten its service delivery since it receive the patients with mental health complication from across the country,” the minister informed.
And the Acting Permanent Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Health, Dk Saitore Laizer expressed that the parent ministry will stand at the forefront to scale up campaigns on public awareness in order to further educating the citizens around the country over how to refrain from the diseases.
As per the 2019 data from the World Health Organization (WHO), one in every eight people in the world has mental health issues, whereby In Tanzania, five out of 100,000 people have committed suicide out of mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, anger and drug abuse in the last five years, statistics have shown.
According to the health experts, there are different forms of mental illness, including mood disorders (such as depression or bipolar disorder) anxiety disorders, personality disorders, psychotic disorders (such as schizophrenia), eating disorders, trauma-related disorders (such as post-traumatic stress disorder) as well as substance abuse disorders.
END..
Comments
Post a Comment