Namibia neglects mental health issues – Hango

The Director of Health in the Ohangwena region, John Hango, said the country has neglected mental health issues for far too long.

Hango made these remarks during the parliamentary standing committee on gender equality, social development and family affairs to the region on Wednesday.

Hango noted that there was an increased number of psychosocial patients in the region’s hospitals, but no facilities for their treatment.

“Our government has neglected the issue of psychosocial illnesses for far too long and they have only recently woken up to it. We don’t have mental health facilities in the region which is so vast, with the second largest population after Windhoek. We have young people who are abusing substances such as drugs and alcohol and the scourge of psychosocial illness has become a big issue in the Ohangwena region,” said Hango.

The Eenhana hospital only has two rooms where mental patients with critical conditions are admitted before they are transferred to the psychosocial health facility at Oshakati hospital.

Speaking to the Namibian, Eenhana hospital’s chief medical doctor, Ngoni Mutambwe said most patients brought to the facilities are those who had relapsed after they stopped taking their medications while at home.

“We bring them here to these two rooms that can only be occupied by one patient at a time and when the hospital receives a bigger number of patients, they are then driven to Oshakati hospital.

“The patients become a danger to themselves and the staff, so we lock them inside here and give them treatment until they are stabilized, whereafter we take them back to the normal wards,” Dr Mutumbwe said.

He adds that when cases are severe the hospital receives supervision from doctors who come from Oshakati hospital.

“They inform us about new methods of management and when they are not here and we receive new patients, we consult with them there at the Oshakati psychiatric unit.”

Mutambwe confirmed that as a result of psychosocial illnesses due to various causes such as depression, and alcohol and drug abuse, they receive a lot of parasuicide cases at the hospital.