Somsak wants better hotline services for mental health, narcotics cases

Somsak, during his visit to the Department of Mental Health on Thursday, said that mental health and narcotics could be tackled together, so he asked the department to review budget expenditure to ensure that 5 million psychiatric patients could access treatment.

“Around 40 per cent of  psychiatric patients suffer due to narcotics,” he said.

He asked the department to follow up on a legal amendment to facilitate budget requests from the narcotics control fund for treating patients. The amendment is expected to be approved within 30 days.

Somsak had asked his team to test the Department of Mental Health and National Institute for Emergency Medicine’s hotlines, simulating a case of a psychiatric patient suffering from narcotics addiction assaulting others.

He found that the hotlines still lacked clear guidelines to tackle core issues because complainants were asked to contact other agencies, such as police or hospitals.

He said integration of a hotline for psychiatric patients who suffered from narcotics causes should be improved, as police should be deployed to deal with patients.   

Any hotlines that lack a budget should raise funds or merge with others to boost service efficiency, he added.

“The hotline test proved that theory alone is not useful, it also needs practice,” he said, adding that all departments lacked integration.

Somsak told the press that the Department of Mental Health is now responsible for dealing with mental health and narcotics in a ratio of 60:40 cases. The budget should be sufficient to mitigate the department’s workload, he said.

Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin has called for a plan to increase the number of medical staff within two weeks to cope with the retirement of medical staff, he said, adding the Public Health Ministry’s permanent secretary had already come up with the plan.