Mental health experts, during a discussion at the Holiday Inn in Dhaka, on Thursday stressed the need to ensure access to care for people suffering from severe mental disorders in Bangladesh’s slums to build a strong nation and healthy.
The country’s renowned mental health expert Dr. Md. Golam Rabbani, former director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) of Bangladesh, said that the mental health gap in Bangladesh is a fact established, access to mental health care is insufficient in Bangladesh. Bangladesh and this is serious for vulnerable and marginalized people with mental disorders, especially those living in the slums of Dhaka.
The Telepsychiatry Research and Innovation Network (TRIN) Limited, the implementing partner of the project “Transforming Access to Care for Serious Mental Disorders in Slums – The TRANSFORM Project”, organized this expert meeting. Dr. Tanjir Rashid Soron, Principal Investigator of the TRANSFORM Bangladesh project, shared with the experts the results of the ethnographic research conducted in the Korail slum and the training modules developed for traditional and faith-based healers and community health workers. Dr. Soron said that TRANSFORM-Bangladesh is implementing the project to increase access to biomedical care by developing a collaborative approach between traditional and faith-based healers, primary health care dividers, mental health professionals and community health workers.
TRANSFORM-Bangladesh strives to develop a culturally specific, effective and acceptable training module for traditional and faith-based healers and community health workers in the slum community. The importance of traditional and faith-based healers is described by NIMH Director Professor Avra Das Bhowmik. People are accustomed to seeing faith healers and without bringing them into the mental health service system, it is not possible to place them in a scientific treatment system. If we can train them to screen, identify and refer mental health issues, the system could have a positive change in mental health treatment. He also mentioned the importance of evidence-based research, intervention and scaling up of learning.
Professor Dr. Bigd. General Md. Azizul Islam, President BAP, Professor Kamal Chowdhury, Department of Clinical Psychology, DU, Professor Dr Wasiful Alam, Department of Public Health, AIUB, Professor Dr Nahid Mahjaben Morshed, Chairman Department of Psychiatry, BSMMU and others Experts from NCDC, icddr’b, ULAB, the Sajeda Foundation and BUET give their opinions and comments on the module.
