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Written by Our Senior Staff
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Friday, 17 August 2012 07:02 |
Those suffering from mental health problems in Liberia might now have access to treatments from locally trained and credentialed mental health clinicians, as there is one each of the clinicians in 14 of the 15 counties.
According to a Carter Center release, the Carter Center’s Mental Health Liberia Program, in partnership with the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare has announced that efforts to build a sustainable mental health care system have reached an important milestone. The release said three years prior, Liberia only had one psychiatrist in the entire country.
The release also revealed that today, the Carter Center’s third class of 24 mental health clinicians-made up of Liberian nurses, physician assistants, and nurse educators- graduates from the six-month, free Post-Basic Mental Health Training Program, held this term in Monrovia. The current clinicians will join 39 others serving 3.8 million Liberians.
According to former First Lady of the United States and Carter Center Co-founder Rosalynn Carter, “Liberia’s new mental health clinicians are pioneers in their field in Africa and the world”. “I know that with their continued hard work, the people of Liberia will have an even brighter future as more citizens are able to get mental health services and contribute more fully to their communities,” she noted.
At the same time, a native Liberian, Dr. Janice Cooper and project lead said “Liberia truly has showed its commitment to mental health care, which we hope will inspire other countries in Africa”.
Clinicians trained through the program receive credentials from the Liberian Government that allow them to return to their former positions in primary care clinics throughout the country to help integrate mental health services into the primary care system..
Accordingly, some of the graduates are educators and will return to university classrooms to ensure the next generation of primary care workers will be better prepared to address mental health problems.
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