The Ministry of Health is recruiting new soldiers in the fight against mental health disorders. Today, it launched a 13 week training course in Mental Health for Nurses to be held at the University of the West Indies.
With more than five hundred nurses working in rural and urban health centers, the Ministry believes that with proper training, this cadre of frontline health professionals can play a significant role in the treatment of mental health disorders.
One area of need is identifying and treating depression, especially in rural areas, where many communities must rely solely on a nursing station for its medical needs.
Dr. Claudine Cayetano, Director - Mental Health Program
"One of the thing that we want is to be able to have the nurses who are working especially with rural areas to understand how to work with its patients because most of the time they have to travel far to come and seek a specialize services and to avoid that so it is important we do this. But this is not an ongoing training it's just one training because of the funding that is required. UWI is an institution that people have to pay to be part of it so that's not something that will be ongoing; I think it's just this time."
Jim McFadzean
"So nurses in the rural areas especially now will have to take on this new role of this new sort of occupation in becoming therapist for this type of disease?"
Dr. Claudine Cayetano, Director - Mental Health Program
"Yes, what we want is that we don't want them to become psychiatric nurse practitioners but they do have nurses, so you want the nurses to be confident and comfortable and be able to know how to deal with patient with chronic disorders and how to identify patients who maybe developing a disorder. So the idea is to do promotion, prevention and also referral so we don't want them to become psychiatric nurse practitioners. We want them to be equipped with the knowledge and how to manage the patients."
According to the World Health Organization, 25 percent of most populations suffer from some type of depression or mental disorder. One hundred and seventy nurses are expected to receive the training.
