India Ensures Nearly Two Thousand New Mental Health Workers per Year
January 21st, 2010
A GoodTherapy.org News Summary
As one of the world’s most rapidly-growing economies, India has been exploring ways to ensure that its health and human services grow in tandem with the population and its soaring and increasingly complex needs, and the field of mental health has certainly not been exempt from from this effort. Recent international media pieces have focused on outdated therapy and treatment practices throughout the country, highlighting the need for India to modernize its services and attend to those faced by acute mental health issues. Today, India’s government has announced that it will take measures to ensure that over one thousand seven hundred mental health professionals are trained and released into the workforce each year, a significant rise over recent levels.
The government has noted that it will spend considerable funds and make significant changes to expand university psychology and psychiatry programs, including the creation of new lecture theaters, libraries, and other facilities for students. Positions for doctoral degrees and other special certifications will also be increased to accommodate the higher student numbers. Of course, the interest of students will have to rise as well if the target numbers are to be reached, but growing understanding about the field of psychology and clinical practice has resulted in a lessening of stigma and an invigorated, curious take on the functioning and expression of the human mind.
The collection of annual mental health professionals produced will include one hundred four psychiatrists, four hundred sixteen clinical psychologists, and over four hundred and eight hundred psychiatric social workers and psychiatric nurses, respectively. Though India’s mental health care system may still have a long road ahead, its determination to progress within the field is becoming especially evident.
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Comments
Great to see these growing numbers!
I suppose that paying for one’s education could make huge strides in getting more students into the field but it makes me wonder how dedicated these future doctors or therapists are going to be if this was not necessarily their chosen field to begin with.
Very pleasant to read this report on India because the existing system there is pretty bleak and making amends is a good way forward. What they also need to do is to ensure that the quality of these new recruits meets standards.
It is a great ster forward, no doubt about it. But an addition of two thousand professionals every year in a country of more than 1.1 billion people seems like a hospital full of patients being treated by one single doctor. This is bound to affect the quality of the services rendered and also of the recovery rate.
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