PESHAWAR: Health experts have cautioned against growing incidence of depression, asking the government to take measures to provide early diagnostic and treatment services to the affected people.

“Depression will soon become one of the leading diseases in developing countries but treatment coverage is not up to a desired level. The government should adopt a collaborative approach to address this challenge,” said Prof Saeed Farooq.

Speaking at the third health policy forum, organised by Prime Institute of Public Health (PIPH) at Peshawar Medical College on Thursday, he expressed concerns over rising trend in mental problems and stressed the need for joint efforts to cope with the unseen public health issue.

The theme of the forum was mental health issues in primary care. The forum was chaired by Provincial Minister for Local Government Inayatullah Khan.

Dr Saeed, a psychiatrist at Lady Reading Hospital, said that prevalence of serious mental illness in lower and middle income countries was about four per cent while schizophrenia was the most common problem.

He said that a recent study conducted in the United States found that people with schizophrenia lose more than 28 years of life. “The onset of mental illness happens in early twenties and leads to formation vicious cycle of physical ill health and burden of disease for the family besides causing poverty,” he said.

Dr Saeed said that a mental ailment was curable if it was detected at an early stage while delay in diagnosis made it difficult to treat it.

He said that government should start free treatment programme for psychiatric patients for the initial three years.

Dr Hafeezur Rehman, the vice dean of Peshawar Medical College, also addressed the forum and said that unfortunately Pakistan developed a fragmentation of health in various silos of specialties and missed the holistic concept of health.

The minister in his concluding remarks said that government took serious measures to bring changes in existing health system by forming autonomous bodies. Separate clinical and administrative directors were appointed in the teaching hospitals, he added.

“We are facing dearth of human resources, especially psychiatrists, in rural areas, but our focus is to ensure availability of health providers at peripheries. We believe that without strengthening our primary health care, we can never control our health problems,” said the minister.

Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2016