By Charles Ndushabandi;
Dr. Yvonne Kayiteshonga, the Head of mental health department at Rwanda Biomedical Center (RBC) has said that there is need for more partners to come on board to support existing initiatives to fight mental health especially with a focus on early intervention programs among children, in schools and families.
She made the remarks while speaking at the celebration of World Mental Health day where RBC department of mental health showed that there are three areas which need to be addressed as the burden of mental health increases in several facets of life.
“We want more people to intervene by creating adolescent and school based mental health programs, we need your support in community based prevention and promotion of services through community health workers and leaders,” Kayiteshonga said.
She added that “Rwanda has put more efforts in general population awareness campaigns and invested in research but there is need to do more follow up informative research (using existing data) to inform emerging challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Dr. Darius Gishoma, the Head of the Mental Health Department at the College of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Rwanda said there is need for innovative ideas to tackle the mental health issues.
“RBC has started a screening exercise for youth but we need innovative ideas on substance abuse, and around the Covid-19 pandemic impact which caused 41% suicide attempt and GBV also increased which also need innovative ways of addressing it,” said Dr. Gishoma,
According to a mental health survey, mental health is a burden in Rwandan society. For instance, one in ten children have depression, one in five youths has a mental health problem and women are more affected than men.
Moreover, it has been found that there is a slight increase in urban than rural areas.
The research also showed gaps in service delivery: Since 2004 when the first mental health policy was developed, 46 hospitals provide mental health (MH) services. 419 Health centers out of 508 have MH services.
RBC findings show that Innovation is highly needed in order to address the small percentage of persons (2%) accessing mental health treatment and the gap is said to be bigger especially among the adolescent.