ISLAMABAD: President Dr Arif Alvi said that a committee may be constituted by the Ministry of National Health Services (NHS) on mental health, with members from public and private stakeholders to brainstorm ideas and come up with a comprehensive plan to provide counselling services to people facing issues or disorders.

He expressed these views while chairing a meeting on mental health, at Aiwan-iSadr on Monday. The meeting was attended by members of the National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR), World Health Organisation (WHO), Pakistan Psychiatric Society (PPS), Taskeen Health Initiative, officials of the Ministry of NHS and other organisations working on the issue of mental health and well-being.

Addressing members of the meeting, the president said that Pakistan had limited resources to cope up with the burden of mental health as an estimated 80pc of people with mental health needs remain untreated.

He said that there was a need to increase the pool of psychiatrists, psychologists and counsellors on a priority basis to ensure the reach of mental health services to the population, especially to the under privileged persons in remote areas of the country. Resolving such issues would increase the nation`s productivity.According to a statement, the president underlined the need to develop and create mental health providers, especially at the primary level for early diagnoses and treatment to detect the illness at the initial stages. Most of the time, patients require active listening and counselling.

He said that in this regard, all available training resources within private and public sectors of the country and online training facilities available internationally should be fully exploited to create a critical mass of mental health providers as f ast as possible. The president said that webbased applications, including chat-bots and so on may also be fully incorporated into the system to provide the first line of help to persons suffering from mental issues. He further said that 45 to 50pc of the people, who were suffering from mental health issues, were treatable.

Dr Alvi said that steps may be taken in order to include child abuse, drug use and behavioural and mental disorders in the overall system through maintaining high quality of service and upholding ethical standards and protocols. Earlier, representatives from the Ministry of Health Services, Taskeen Health Initiative and Omang Pakistan in their separate presentations discussed mental health education. They said that there was a need to forge purpose-based integrated collaborations among all stakeholders for provision of mental health facilities at the grassroots level.