I

ndonesia is still in need of thousands of psychiatrists to help deal with mental health disorders, an official with the Health Ministry said on Thursday evening.

Speaking at a forum held to improve the role of media in mental health issues in Bandung, West Java, Suyatmi, who is in charge of non-facility health services, said that Indonesia currently had only 600 psychiatrists nationwide.

With a population of 240 million, this meant that each psychiatrist served between 400,000 and 500,000 people, he said.

“Ideally a psychiatrist serves 30,000 people, meaning that Indonesia needs some 8,000 psychiatrists,” he said.

The condition is considered alarming, given a 2007 demography and health survey that revealed 11.6 percent of people 15 years old and above experienced minor mental health problems such as anxiety and depression and 0.46 percent of the total population of the country experienced serious depression, such as manic depression or schizophrenia.

Suyatmi said the Health Ministry had issued a policy to improve the quality and quantity of psychiatric education.

“We have approached eight education centers producing psychiatrists to ease the enrollment process,” she said.

In term of budget, she said, there has also been an increase.

In 1997, for example, the state budget for mental health was only Rp 600 million (US$70,200), compared to Rp 22 billion in the 2011 state budget.

“The funds have to be spent efficiently and are not allowed to fund trips out of town,” she said.

Separately, psychiatrist G. Pandu Setiawan, who is also the founder of a mental health communication network, expressed disagreement over an assumption that the small number in psychiatrists was due to the profession’s unpromising future.

“It’s more due to mental health education promotional efforts that are not good enough [to attract new psychiatrists]. In fact, mental health has a very wide coverage,” he said.

Pandu suggested that the government offer scholarships or incentives to students willing to study mental health just as it did for other medical specialists so they would be able to help deal with mental health problems in their respective regions.

He said ideally each hospital at the municipal or regency level would have at least one psychiatrist.

An even distribution of psychiatrists, he said, would help a great deal in the referral process from community health centers.

“At present half of the psychiatrists are in Jakarta and the rest are in Surabaya and Yogyakarta. None are in rural areas,” he said.