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Samaan Lateef
Tribune News Service
Srinagar, December 16
From a mental asylum of the prisons’ department in 1800, the Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (IMHANS) has grown into a premier healthcare facility in the Kashmir valley and is witnessing an epidemic of depression-related issues.
The mental asylum was handed over to the health department in 1950 and it became an associated hospital of the Government Medical College (GMC), Srinagar, in 1971, when it was headed by a Swiss psychiatrist, Prof Erina Hoech.
As the psychiatry hospital of the GMC, it started from three-room single-storeyed building. On an average, nearly 3,000 patients seek treatment for mental illness at the hospital every year. Official figures reveal that 3,915 patients visited the health facility in 1980, while the number was 1,762 in 1990.
As the conflict intensified in Kashmir, the number of people with mental illness visiting the hospital increased and shot up to 62,000 patients in 2004. The hospital was upgraded as IMHANS along with eight other mental health institutes in the country in 2009.
The officials, however, say they will make the new six-storeyed hospital building, located on the banksof Nigeen lake adjacent to Badamwari (Garden of almonds) in old Srinagar city, functional in thenext few months.
Moreover, the rising conflict has pushed Kashmir into a mental health crisis as the number of people with depression-related issues has seen an increase. The number of patients who visited IMHANS till October this year was 1,02,206, while the number was 1,06,743 in 2017.
Psychiatrists say mostly women suffering from depression visited IMHANS in Kashmir. “IMHANS patients comprise 60 per cent women and 40 per cent men. However, the patients admitted to IMHANS include 70 per cent men as the locals are not willing to admit women to the hospital due to the stigma attached to the disease,” said Prof Arshad Hussain, psychiatrist, IMHANS.
He said the mental health services need to be expanded and integrated into a primary healthcare system to contain the growing number of people with mental illness — the most stigmatised issue.
Due to the lack of awareness and non-availability of professional care, experts said the treatment gap was very high in Kashmir, where depression and anxiety-related disorders constitute most of the mental problems. They described the prevalence of 11.3 per cent severe mental health disorders in the adult population an “abnormally serious situation”.
“The 11.3 per cent morbidity of severe mental illness in adults is quite high, almost double than the overall national picture, much of which is undetected and untreated,” reads a recent study conducted by thepsychiatrists of IMHANS in collaboration with ActionAid India, an NGO.
“Only 12.6 per cent of the people with mental illness sought help from health services and 6.4 per cent consulted a psychiatrist,” reads the study.
However, the psychiatrists attributed the low-treatment levels to “very high stigmatisation” of mental illness and inaccessible treatment at the community level.
“We often take the patients to a spiritual healer because psychiatrists are not available in our area. It was only after my patient’s health deteriorated that a relative suggested us to visit this (IMHANS) hospital,” said an attendant of a Kupwara.
From an asylum to psychiatry hospital
Rise in mental health issues
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