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{
    "id": 905783,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/905783/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 244,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. (Prof). Ongeri",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 124,
        "legal_name": "Samson Kegeo Ongeri",
        "slug": "samson-ongeri"
    },
    "content": "Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, our mental hospitals do not offer the environment that is conducive to rapid healing. Those who have been in those hospitals have been healed and gone out as people who can run a perfect mental hospital and encourage the other people who are mentally ill so that they can take them through the milestones they went through before they came out. Use volunteers particularly those who have had similar episodes and discharged from hospital. They are best volunteers to sit down with those patients in our mental institutions and walk them through the path they have walked through to success. We need to incorporate this as part of the treatment; social engagement and social treatment before you go to the actual psychotropic drug treatment. It is important that we understand and appreciate this. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, I have seen a mental hospital in the outskirts of Kampala that looks like a Five Star hotel. When you feel your mind is not stable, you walk into that hospital and get checked. One is treated in a similar manner as when you have tonsillitis, you walk into the Doctors Plaza, get checked and given antibiotics. When individuals feel uncomfortable with their mental status, they should walk into a facility like that, get diagnosed and treated. Unfortunately, even educated legislators like us, when you hear that one has a mental illness, you immediately jump to the conclusion that this is a lunatic and you do not know what he will do to you. They have resigned themselves to living very difficult lives. We must now bring them out of that very pit and make them look like human beings in the face of everybody. You will be surprised that when these people are successfully treated, they function like anyone else. Mr. Deputy Speaker Sir, this is a county government Bill because all the medical cases have been decentralized and devolved to county governments. County governments must be involved in the Mental Health Board that is setup at the top, so that they know the kind of issues they will handle. We should not exclude them because they are the people who will effect the policies and programmes for mental health cases in their counties. We must have properly trained personnel; mental psychiatrist, psychologists, nurses and clinical officers who can handle mental patients like any other nurse who handles regular medical cases that come to their health clinic. Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the institutions that are set up need not be separated from where the other patients are. It should just be a ward catering for these patients. The doctors will be in a position to know who are the violent cases that have gone beyond repair that need specialized attention in Mathari Hospital or these other institutions that have specialized equipment to be able to handle them. Sometimes the mental illness may be because of an underlying disease. Therefore they must go through normal checks and balances."
}