Tour of Zomba Mental Health Hospital
Treatment of mental illness is challenging in Malawi as it
is everywhere. Medications are
minimal. Today we visited the one and
only mental health hospital in Malawi. Out tour guide is one of our Global Health Profession scholars Genesis who is a mental health nurse.
There are adult and adolescent patients.
The building is clean and neat and of course the care appears to be very
good. There is only one psychiatrist in
country, several nurses who can care for the patients but it is an area that
needs to be developed. Mental health medications are very expensive therefore in
Malawi the health care providers still use first generation of antipsychotics
such as Thorazine. The pharmacy is managed by a nurse because there are no pharmacists in country who are interested in working at the hospital. The medications
have horrible side effects and one could argue that it is better than nothing. Most of the patients appear to be walking
around in a medication fog. It is the
only way to try to treat symptoms and control behavior.
The stigma of mental illness plagues villages, communities
and the country at large. The Malawian
healthcare providers who choose to work with this population of patients are
quite dedicated and do all that is humanly possible to provide quality care.
It makes my head hurt to think that there is one mental health hospital that is available to serve a
total population of about 15 million people.
The need is tremendous however in talking
with the hospital staff there is hope…
No comments:
Post a Comment