The Portfolio Committee on Health met on Thursday to hold a panel discussion on mental health issues in celebrating World Mental Health Day. The Chairperson for Committee, Dr Bevan Goqwana, said Parliament had organised the event to create awareness about world mental health day.
The event was attended by various stakeholders in the health sector including academic institutions, government and organisations that deal with people affected by mental health disorders.
Every year on 10 October, the United Nations World Health Organisation joins in celebrating the World Mental Health Day. The day is celebrated at the initiative of the World Federation of Mental Health and WHO supports this initiative through raising awareness on mental health issues using its strong relationships with the ministries of health and civil society organisations across the globe.
The theme for the South Africa discussion was “What progress have we made to scale up services.”
A presentation from the Department of Health provided an overview of priority actions and interventions that have been developed and implemented to further transform the mental health care system.
The Director of the Department of Health, Mr Sifiso Phakathi, said in scaling up investment in mental healthcare eight catalytic objectives have been developed to provide major difference in order to improve to the mental health. Namely, to implement a district based mental health service and align with primary health care, institutional capacity, human resources for mental health, improvement of the infrastructure and capacity of that facilities. The objective of the department has been aligned with the WHO mental health action plan 2013-2020.
During the panel discussion one of the criticisms towards public and private sector was the lack of priority accorded to mental health care.
The Committee welcomed the plans and funding allocated to improve the dilapidated buildings and centres.
Mr Goqwana said talking about mental health is “very difficult and can be confusing because it is a functional problem: hence it is important to create such public platforms that allow us to engage so that we remove the stigma attached with mental health”.
For media enquiries or interviews with the Chairperson, please contact:
Yoliswa Landu
Parliamentary Communication Services
Tel: 021 403 8203
Cell: 073 738 0182
E-mail: ylandu@parliament.gov.za
