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{
    "id": 1460339,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1460339/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 235,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Funyula, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr) Ojiambo Oundo",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "For many years, many of us never understood and appreciated the issue of mental health. It is only in the recent past when high profile cases of suicide, mass murder or some kind of funny behaviours that have been reported in the newspapers that had been witnessed all over the country that the issue of mental health has now been forced to come to the fore and public debate. Hon. Temporary Speaker, where I come from, for many years since my childhood, in the early 1970s, we used to have the joke that every marketplace had its mad man and whenever another one came, the existing mad man would tell the other one that the market was too small to accommodate two mad men. The old one would urge the new arrival to look for another market to roam around. It was such form of disdain that mental health patients were treated to. Over time, there has been a very difficult point to draw between mental health and psychological issues. I do not purport to be an expert in that area. However, I believe that in the fullness of time, experts in that area will draw a line between mental health and psychological issues caused by stress, hereditary or other issues at hand. It suffices to say that we cannot continue to bury our heads in the sand. The statistics given by Hon. Mishi Mboko are very scary. If 10 per cent of the population is suffering from one level of mental health or another, that is very scary. As a country, as some of my colleagues have said, it is important to look at the Mental Health Policy and see where we went wrong and what we have done to implement the same so that we are able to manage and live with mental health related issues. Hon. Temporary Speaker, as it has been said, not everybody who is properly dressed, speaks fluent English, walks around elegantly and swings his body from one side to the other is okay. Mental health varies from one level to another, and that is why I get scared of our colleague Members of Parliament. Some of the things they say and do, and how they even act on the Floor of the House or when they have been given a microphone in public rallies or at funerals or even in churches makes me believe that our mental health is at a certain degree of madness. As we say in my village, that is what differentiates us. That is why I totally agree that we need to take mental health training, treatment and attention to the lowest levels of our societies. Hon. Esther Passaris has narrated a story. Many of us have children in our homesteads but we never know some of the things they do, which could be a sign of mental health. Some of us have had the opportunity to be lecturers at universities. When you go to a lecture hall, some behaviour and demeanour exhibited by some students clearly indicates that we have many cases of mental health in this country. I do not want to belabour the point that my colleagues have raised. I only want to say that 99 per cent of health and health management issues is a devolved function. I will never tire to urge the county governments that Baba Raila Amollo Odinga advocated for devolution, not for the sake of it but to take the services that had been decentralised at the centre, as we used to say, to the periphery. It is because people at the centre never allowed people in the periphery to come and interfere at the centre. Therefore, devolution gave us a chance to take some of these issues to the periphery. It would be prudent for us to solve this problem by ensuring that every single health facility in all parts of this country has somebody trained in medical mental health issues. We have Community Health Volunteers. Do we have anybody among them who has requisite training in mental health? We are now able to detect malaria and basic communicable diseases and even make a phone call and prescribe medication. Do we have mental healthcare specialists in that group? It is a matter I hope the Departmental Committee on Health will seize and ensure that out of the 20 or so community health workers in any given constituencies, there is a mental healthcare specialist. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}