Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 813190,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/813190/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 189,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "Kenya adopted the Lunacy Act of 1910, which was the British mental health law. From there, we moved to the Mental Health Act of 1991 which was enacted and established the mental health boards, which I will allude to a little later. In 2010, we had the new Constitution. The Ministry of Health drafted a Bill that was meant to amend the Mental Health Act of 1991. Unfortunately, probably because of timing and going into an election, it was not passed. Madam Temporary Speaker, in 2014, Hon. Lekuton brought a Bill to the National Assembly, but it did not go far. I am not sure why. We have tried to establish the reasons, but we still do not know. Therefore, to date, we do not have amendments to the 1991 legislation on mental health. What we have in the country today is a Mental Health Policy 2015-2030, which has largely not been operationalized. This is where the problem begins. If we look at what is in the Mental Health Act of 1991, it has a section that made provision for the district mental health councils, which I think was a very brilliant idea at that time. If we are to amend this, which I am hoping to work with several stakeholders, we need to devolve mental health to all the counties with the establishment of the mental health facilities in each county. The 14 institutions that we have are not adequate. The idea that they had in this Bill is that there should be councils in every district which, of course, leads to having access to the facilities in those districts is alluding to the fact that it was envisioned and it needs to be actualized. Madam Temporary Speaker, this is something that I would really like to see actualized and I look forward to working towards. However, by the time we get to that point, we need the infrastructure to be put in place. Since it has been envisioned in the policy as well, we need to devolve mental health completely down to the county level. We need to advocate for one mental health support facility within the villages and, at least one fully equipped mental health facility, at the county level. It can be either a part of Level 4 or Level 5 hospital, but they need to be available in every county. The facilities also need to be fully equipped. Currently, what we know about Mathari National Teaching and Referral Hospital is that there was a petition that was brought to the Eleventh Parliaments in 2016 by Mr. Elijah King’ori regarding the deplorable state of the mental health facilities in Kenya. Case in point was the Mathari National Teaching and Referral Hospital .What was recommended in the report is yet to be actualized. One of the recommendations that they made because of the pressure with which Mathari National Teaching and Referral Hospital has to handle mental cases, forensic mental issues as well as be a prison for the mentally ill prisoners. They recommended that the Ministry of Health in line with the policy should work with the national and county governments to invest in health infrastructure and ensure progressive increase to mental health services. We are yet to see this being actualized. In line with that, I recommend in this Motion that this infrastructure be set up. Madam Temporary Speaker, noting that most youth are affected because of lack of jobs, voice, mentorship and mature guidance in some instances, counselling and awareness programmes also need to be put into place. We have a lot of substance abuse. My co-sponsor will talk on the issues that affect the youth and the interventions that can The electronic version of the Senate Hansard Report is for information purposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor, Senate."
}