Tri-party agreement signed to aid people with mental disorders
The Mental Health Department, Mahidol University (MU) and Advanced Wireless Network Co (AWN) signed a five-year Memoradum of Agreement on Thursday for the use of technology, research and knowledge to aid people with intellectual disabilities and forensic psychiatric patients in Thailand, said Mental Health Department director-general Dr Kiatipumi Wongrajit.
The department's Rajanukul Institute had implemented a pilot programme in organic farming involving four people with intellectual disabilities, two Down's syndrome patients and three people with autism.
After three months in the programme, all of the participants had improved 100 per cent in vocational skills for organic farming and in basic and advance daily routine-making capacity. Some 88.98 per cent improved in necessary social skills to interact with the community, he said.
The programme will soon be implemented along with the MU Engineering Faculty's qEEG software and the AWN digitalized market outlet (www.aisfarmsuk.com/) in a bigger scale and include forensic psychiatric patients, he said.
AWN is a subsidiary of Advanced Info Service Public Company Limited (AIS), which is Thailand's largest GSM mobile phone operator.