Post Covid Psychiatric Rehabilitation of Beneficiaries in Need

As per the recent research made by civic-run SevenHills Hospital on 17,676 covid recovered patients, almost 7% of them found to have mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, psychosis, post-traumatic stress disorder which need counselling and treatment. Thus to bring back our country to its feet, Post-Covid Psychiatric Rehabilitation of the community is crucial.

Maharashtra is one of the largest agricultural states in India, farmers in this region play a very important role in the configuration and maintenance of the Indian economy. Given the conditions of poverty, insufficient state aid and climatic conditions have led to an increase in depression and mental health complications among farmers and in extreme cases has resulted in farmer suicide deaths.

This has directly influenced the culture and the society adversely. Central to these issues, the lack of education, medical care, lack of quality resources, family problems, social awareness and the exploitation of farmers by crop distributors has negatively affected the mental health of farmers. The obstacle to alleviating farmers’ mental health issues is the stigma associated with mental health in Indian culture. Hence, it has prevented farmers from seeking help to alleviate their stress.

UVS project is focused on public health activities for the detection, treatment, and monitoring of risk factors, and to carry real epidemiological data on mental health of the farmers.

The Psychiatric Rehabilitation Project aims to improve mental health conditions by providing care and rehabilitation services to the beneficiaries. The Program has been designed to spread awareness, make assessments, and to enable the adoption of interventions to promote mental health which arises post covid disease; and especially prevent suicidal tendencies among the farmers and induce resilience to economic, social, and cultural problems.

The program with duration of four months to cover 30 villages (expected beneficiaries approximately 9528) in the Vidarbha region for the proposed Mental Health Program and these regions are badly affected during the second wave of Covid19. On an individual psychological level, the lack of education, medical care, lack of familial support, and accessibility to quality resources has deepened the farmer’s mental distress. This cycle has led to low morale and increased farmer suicide death rates in the region. This has directly impacted the degradation of the environment and social unrest, thereby creating a dwindling cycle.

The challenge to mental health awareness and remedy to beneficiaries in distress are the stigma associated with mental health in Indian culture which prevents people from seeking help. This project is focused on public health activities for the detection, treatment and monitoring of risk factors, and to carry real epidemiological data to study mental health diseases due to Covid19.

The objective is to improve timely and effective access to comprehensive mental health care services for people affected during Covid19 or with a history of suicidal behaviour.

With the aim to improve health, the program will target all relevant partners at the local level. Numerous health problems are too complex to be solved only by health services. Besides this, solutions for health problems could be found only at the places of their origins – local environments where people are working and living. Through the partnership with the local community influence changes of people behaviour, contribute to the development of community health through changes in the environment, minimization of health risks, and development of local initiatives for

employment, prevention of other, numerous problems influencing local health.

Education will be organized through the engagement of villages through assemblies, talks, street shows, etc. to build awareness

1. Health determinants and population health assessment and monitoring
2. Information and knowledge in public health
3. Health promotion and community actions
4. Therefore, participants in educative assemblies/talks will be physicians from primary health care centres, representatives of local governments (municipalities), representatives of educational sectors (teachers from primary and secondary schools), representatives of UVS team and representatives of local media.