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Every year I get the chance to move around the county while following up and assessing students attached at the various hospitals in Kenya, from levels 4-6 in both public and mission hospitals. And the mental health scare subsector, is one of the most underserved areas in the healthcare delivery systems in Kenya.
According to the recently launched ‘National clinical guidelines for management of common mental disorders 2024’, one in every ten people in Kenya has a common mental health disorder, with up to 25 per cent of those visiting the outpatient and 40 per cent of the inpatients having a mental health condition.
This is a glaring scenario, bearing in mind the abject financial and human resources availed for mental healthcare.
The Covid-19 pandemic provided a paradigm shift on the role of mental health services in our healthcare delivery system with the government employing Clinical Psychologists, and posting them in some level 5 and national hospitals, to support in the provision of psychosocial support services, but this needs to be the norm rather than a knee jerk pandemic response.
Kenya boasts of only one national mental health hospital, the Mathari National Teaching and Referral Hospital.
Out of the 284 level 4 plus hospitals only 30 have mental health services, majority offered by nurses and clinical officers specialized in mental health and psychiatry since the country has less than 100 psychiatrists in the public hospitals.
Majority of psychiatrists are based in urban centres leaving the few domiciled in the rural areas servicing a population of 3-5 million each, a number way above the recommend who average of one psychiatrist per 10,000.
The major gap is in the provision of counselling and therapy services with majority of the patients receiving both outpatient and inpatient treatment requiring adjunct psychosocial support. Yet in the majority of our public hospitals, the services are non-existent.
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Critical cases like trauma due to road traffic accidents, patients with terminal diagnoses, mothers who lose babies during delivery and other life threatening cases, like rape, exposure to extreme violence, natural disasters and even post-surgical complications require therapeutic support.
- The writer is a licensed psychologist/psychiatrist/clinical officer and lecturer KMTC Meru Campus
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