Puyang City Mental Health Service Status And Countermeasures

Objective:To provide a scientific basis for relevant government departments to establish mental health developing program and allocate mental health resources reasonably in order to improve mental health services,we took a comprehensive survey to the Mental Health Service status of Puyang City in 2007, finding out the gap and deficiency in Mental Health resources and abilities between the level of Puyang city and the average level of the HeNan province and the China.Methods:The survey was carried out by questionnaire which was made out by reviewing the literature and consulting experts and group interview. Results:The results indicate that there are four mental health specialist hospitals,292 psychiatric beds,45 psychiatrists,91 psychiatric nurses in whole city,and the average is 0.81 bed per 10 thousand people,1.24 psychiatrists for 100 thousand people,2.51 nurses for 100 thousand people, respectively.In one year,there are 40,738 frequency of treatment,1466 person-times of psychological counselling clinic,2637 patients discharged, 28.9 days of the average hospital stay,75.04%of bed utilization rate.Peaple in city have think highly of psychological health,and the number of psychological clinic clients is gradually increased.Medication is the main therapeutic lacking of multiple cures,meanwhile Medical equipments are simple and crude without advanced equipments,enclosed type of management is employed and community service of mental and health work is undeveloped.The whole revenues of 4 hospitals are 6.26 million,so per capita annual income is 24.8 thousand.Only half of the hospitals can get a small amount of grants due to seriously inadequate inputs of local government,which is substantially lower than the average level in the province,none but 4 comprehensive hospitals set up psychiatric department,lacking of necessary equipment and high-level professionals,those small quantity of professional staffs,with low academic stand ards and insufficient research,only render limited services,.Mental patient can not afford medical expense then defaulting is common and serious.The risk for mental health professionals is large,but the salary is low.People is deficient in knowledge of mental and health and have discrimination and prejudice against mental patients and mental health professionals.A number of important mental problems are ignored by public and hospital visits are low. Conclusions:first,a unified administrative institution of mental health program should be established,for increasing financial investment of the mental health enterprise,strengthening the construction of mental health professionals team,and consummating mental health service system and network building;second,we suggest that the propaganda of mental health knowledge should be intensified,to eliminate the discrimination and prejudice against mental patients,boost thehospital visits of them to make the best of mental health service;third,we should make great efforts to develop the mental health services in the community and set up the psychiatric department in comprehensive hospitals in order to satisfy utmost the public needs for mental and health service;fourth,we should launch educational guidance of precaution for psychology behavior problems,mental crisis and mental health issue,and improve psychological counseling and psychotherapy service level for providing various kinds of new type service of mental health;fifth,wise policy should be adopted to resolve the primary Health Care for severe mental patients,and to raise the accessibility of mental and health service;finally,the mental and health regulations of Puyang should be constituted as soon as possible for the development of mental health care in Puyang.