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By Maore Ithula
There are only two qualified paediatric psychiatrists in East and Central Africa and they are stationed at the Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH).
These are Dr Josephine Omondi and her colleague Dr Ian Kanyanya. While Omondi was trained in South Africa, Kanyanya specialised in child psychiatry in the UK.
They have three other medical experts who have interest in child psychiatry but since the trio has not had any formal training in the field, they act as support staff.
Every Monday of the week, Omondi and Kanyanya attend to 14 children suffering from various mental illnesses at KNH.
On such a day the KNH’s Patient Support Centre teems with children with their parents, guardians or teachers in tow. The 14 are picked on first-come first-served basis.
And because 14 is the maximum number that the two medics can handle in a day, the rest are rescheduled for subsequent weeks. Otherwise, those with the wherewithal may meet the two experts in the upmarket health institutions where they spend a small fortune on the medication offered.
Omondi says: "It would be possible to attend to most of the patients in other days of the week but the clinic where we see them is used for other functions on those days."
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Omondi and Kanyanya say children who often suffer depression are those in Class Five and above and the problem rears its head when terminal or national examinations are around the corner. At these levels, formal education starts getting a little more complicated. The medics appeal to the Government to set up regional school-based counselling centres across the country to help children, in the absence of correctional penalties like the corporal punishment that was scraped a decade ago.
About 20 per cent of American children suffer from a diagnosable mental illness during a given year, according to the US Surgeon General. Further, nearly five million American children and adolescents suffer from a serious mental illness (one that significantly interferes with their day to day life).
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