Mental health sector lags behind
The number of people suffering from mental diseases tends to increase due to mounting pressure of modern life, however, the country has so few doctors specialising in the field, said director of the Hanoi Mental Hospital Ly Tran Tinh.
The latest statistics of the Ministry of Health released in March this year showed that the country has only one mental doctor per 100,000 residents, whereas the rate in Thailand and Japan is 12/ 100,000 and 25/ 100,000, respectively.
The country has 34 mental hospitals and centres, and 31 provinces do not have any centres specialising in mental diseases.
The Hanoi Mental Hospital gives treatment to nearly 20,000 outpatients and 3,500 inpatients per year but with only 40 doctors on staff. As many as 30 more are needed, said Tinh.
About 10 years ago, the Hanoi Medical University had a mental diseases faculty, but over the years it could not enroll enough doctors in the mental health field and recently the university focused on training general doctors. The ones specialising in mental disorders became fewer and fewer.
In many foreign countries, such as Japan or the US, people are ready to go to psychiatrists or psychologists when they encounter any mental problems. However, Vietnamese often hide their condition as they associate mental diseases with being "mad".
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The Hanoi Mental Hospital has some preferential policies to attract doctors to work in the hospital including opportunities for them to further their studies and other allowances. Yet, many doctors work for only a few months and then quit the job.
"The main reason is that the salary is so low, about VND3-4 million (US$140-190) per month which is not enough for them to make ends meet," Tinh said.
The Government's Decree 74, which was put into effect last month, is a positive sign for the mental health sector, as it includes detailed preferential policies for students and lecturers in the sector. The number of doctors in the sector can be improved in the future, said Tinh.
The crux of the matter is expanding the dissemination of information on mental diseases to change the way residents incorrectly think about these diseases.
Changing wrong attitudes will encourage more doctors to specialise in the field, and improve the quality of mental health care in the future, said Tinh.