Uganda: Mental health patients overwhelm Butabika

Butabika Hospital, a government facility that treats patients with mental challenges, is overwhelmed with patients, with the hospital now managing twice the number it is meant to accommodate.

Dr Juliet Nakku, the executive director of the facility, said the soaring number of mental patients is way beyond the few available psychiatrists.

“Butabika is designated as a 550-bed hospital but we have double the number of patients in admission, more than 1,000 and this is a challenge to the institution,” Dr Nakku said on Tuesday during an award ceremony in Kampala.

She added: “We have only 10 psychiatrists at the hospital, which is very small for such severely ill admitted patients. These psychiatrists are also teachers/lecturers [because] we are a teaching hospital with another mandate to develop human resources for mental healthcare. We have lots of students from many health training institutions. We need a minimum of 30 psychiatrists and several medical officers and clinical officers to manage the load of patients.”

She further said available studies have shown that the country is grappling with a huge burden of mental health problems that are largely unattended to in children, adolescents, and adults.

“A recent study done by the Ministry of Health, together with Makerere University, shows that one in three individuals suffered a mental health problem and the main causes of mental problems include anxiety, depression, and alcohol,” she said.

She also revealed that one in three children aged between 11 and 17 years interviewed, suffered emotional problems.

As a way forward, Dr Nakku called upon the government to upgrade the psychiatric nurses’ teaching schools in the country.

“We want Butabika Psychiatric Nurse Training School to include a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychiatric Nursing so that specialists can compete at the international level like other professionals,” she said.

She added: “There is also the need to upgrade the tutors and clinical mentors to degree and master levels so that they create a critical mass of human resources, who can and will teach psychiatric nursing at the degree level. Lack of support to train the teachers is a major hindrance to development in this area because it is a specialized discipline and not everyone can teach it.”

Speaking at the same event, the State Minister for Higher Education, Mr John Chrysostom Muyingo, said the call by Dr Nakku comes at a time when the budgeting process has just started and there is a window to fix some of the issues in the coming financial year.

Causes

Drugs, alcohol, and depression are the main causes of mental illness among adolescents and adults, according to Ms Harriet Kwagala, the principal of Butabika School of Psychiatric Nursing.

Medically, she named conditions such as epilepsy, HIV, and other infectious diseases affecting the brain as the common risk factors. Other risk factors were named as head trauma, old age, and social economic problems such as poverty, effects of war, disasters, and pandemics.