People with mental illnesses should also be classified independently in the special interest groups, the Mental Health Task Force collecting public views around the country has been told.
Residents who turned up for a public hearing organised by the task force at YMCA hall in Nyeri town on Tuesday said this will bring the number of the special groups to four.
“In Kenya today, special interest groups are persons with disability, women and the youth,” Murang'a's Kiharu Persons with Disabilities Sacco chairperson Veronica Irungu said.
This would enable them to enjoy the benefits enjoyed by the special groups.
Irungu also chairs a community-based organisation known as Kiharu Network for Persons with Disability.
She complained that buying of drugs by family members whose relatives have mental issues sometimes gets hard.
Many county hospitals lack essential drugs with people going for the expensive lifetime drugs in chemists in Nairobi further increasing the cost, she said.
“We also request that the government considers starting halfway homes for patients with mental illness so that those leaving hospitals can be housed there to adjust to a home environment."
A halfway house is an institution where people with physical, mental and emotional disabilities or those with criminal backgrounds, visit after leaving hospital or prison to learn or relearn necessary skills before being reintegrated into society.
This also makes them self-reliant.
Irungu said this has been the practice in other countries in the world.
The practice where people leaving hospitals are taken direct home with the belief that they will adjust should be discouraged, the chairperson said.
"Even people who try to commit suicide and are jailed are released to go back home with the view that they are healed which is not right as they do not meet psychiatrist in prison and, therefore, perpetuating a cycle of problems."
They also recommended that annual mental health conferences be started so that experts like psychiatrists, psychologists, counsellors and other stakeholders such as social workers, teachers and parents can share best practices.
“Let us also introduce community welfare levy so people selling drugs like miraa and alcohol can pay a levy to go towards rehabilitation of people with mental problems,” Irungu said.
Counties, they suggested, should set aside some funds to celebrate the Mental Health Month in October saying counties have not been supporting the events.
The other recommendation by Irungu was to review police service recruitment and their curriculum "as the service could be recruiting people with the wrong attitude who end up taking important things casually".
“Those recruited in the police force should not be people abusing drugs. People who are taking and using drugs cannot be expected to keep track of drugs or fight the vice,” she said.
She suggested that counsellors be recruited at the grassroots level to offer their expertise at the community level.
Mental health units should also be reformed, she said, noting that many counties have only one psychiatrist against a whole county while others do not have one at all.
The chairperson linked this to a lack of seriousness in the rehabilitation of drug addicts.
“It is high time service delivery in counties was reformed. We can involve other people like counsellors in the identification of patients and referral of patients to mental health facilities,” she said.
Michael Ndegwa from Nyeri Budget Coalition group said the government should conduct a baseline survey to get statistics that will guide programming and budgeting.
Policies after being formulated should also be implemented, he added.
Like Mwangi, Ndegwa also emphasised on the need to control access to harmful drugs saying Mututho laws are no longer adhered to.
He said the government should also set aside more funds and hire more experts to address the issues of mental health.
Jane Muthoni also called on the government to look for ways of bringing the cost of mental drugs down.
“We use very old medicines which also have a lot of lethargy and that is why when one takes them he or she cannot work. We need modern medicine without so much lethargy so that patients are also able to work instead of being dependants,” she said.
The public hearing was led by Mental Health director Simon Njuguna and Oscar Githua both from the Ministry of Health.
Also present was Nyeri director of Medical Services Nelson Muriu.
The task force was formed following a Cabinet directive last year on November 21 and inaugurated on December 11 by then CS Sicily Kariuki.
It was mandated to assess the prevailing mental health status in Kenya, the social determinant and other factors contributing to adverse mental health.
Edited by R.Wamochie
