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lack of psychiatrists and facilities in Indonesia has become one of the main challenges for the country in providing adequate treatment for mental health patients.

Laurentius Panggabean from the Health Ministry’s directorate of mental health, said recently that there were currently only 35 public psychiatric hospitals and 16 private ones in a country with more than 237 million people.

Eight provinces, including Banten, Central Kalimantan and West Sulawesi have no psychiatric hospitals at all, he said.

In many regions, there are only four beds to every 100,000 residents, far below the ideal one to 10,000, Laurentius said.

The ideal ratio for psychiatrists to residents is also one in 10,000, but Indonesia only 600 registered psychiatrists, or one for every 400,000 residents.

While psychiatric care should be available in psychiatric hospitals, only a few hospitals have made the care available and only a handful of community health centers are equipped with doctors with training in psychiatry.

Laurentius added that only around two out of every 100 medical students was interested in majoring in psychiatry.

A 2007 basic health study showed that 4.6 of 1,000 people aged between 15 and 64 suffered from severe mental illnesses, while there are an estimated 625,000 mental patients nationwide.

“The number of people suffering from other mental disorders that are not as severe is estimated at around 2.1 million,” Laurentius said.

In some cases, a lack of adequate facilities and qualified professionals to treat patients of mental illnesses resulted in patients being exposed to pasung, a traditional practice where patients are shackled or restrained and sometimes caged because it is feared they could harm themselves or others.

The ministry estimated that the number of people illness sufferers held in pasung ranged from 13,000 to 24,000.

Recently, the government announced its commitment to free the country from the heinous practice, setting a goal to get proper treatment in medical facilities to all mental illness patients by 2014.

The government said it planned to send pasung patients to public psychiatric hospitals and also announced it would increase the number of facilities.

Laurentius said the government was targeting to provide 10 beds at all public hospitals in regencies, as well as train more doctors to handle patients with mental illnesses.

“Our target for the next five years is to have at least 100 public hospitals across Indonesia that can provide psychiatric care,” he said.

—JP/ Dina Indrasafitri