Shortage of Psychiatrists!

St Cerebellum's Psychiatric Hospital,UK

India is facing an alarming shortage of psychiatrists. Expecting better quality of life,advanced facilities for research as well as salary package, the country’s specialist psychiatrists are heading to the Queen’s land where the crisis is even worse: one psychiatrist for every 90,000 people (compared to one for every 35,000 in India). The entire faculty of Lady Hardinge Medical College’s psychiatry department left two years back, leading to the department being shut down. Recently, several AIIMS faculty members have also moved to the UK. According to Indian government’s national consultant on mental health, the country had just 2,219 practising psychiatrists in May 2002. For a billion people, the country needed 10,000 doctors. In fact we have only 4000 psychiatrists.What is more stark is that nearly 15% of India’s population is suffering from mental problems, and 1% of them are admitted in hospitals.
More distressing is the fact that there are only 36 government-run mental hospitals of which 4 are located in Maharashtra. Maharashtra has about 480 pychiatrists to serve population of 10 crores.So a Psychiatrist is catering to population of 2 lakhs.
But out of these 480 about 240 are in Mumbai and 80 in Pune. So you can understand the pathetic condition of psychiatric services in rest of Maharashtra.Also there is shortage of clinical psychologists.With young medicos from Maharashtra joining MD Psychiatry course in prestigeous institutes like NIMHANS, Bangalore this year,we expect improvement in psychiatric services.