Shillong, May 10: The state government will soon sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Kerala Psychiatric Society to address the shortage of trained psychiatrists in the state.
Announcing this on Friday, Social Welfare Minister Paul Lyngdoh said the state is faced with the problem of shortage of trained psychiatrists to handle drug addicts in detox centres.
“Therefore, I am happy to share with you that we are shortly coming up with an MoU with the Kerala Psychiatric Society where about 72 psychiatrists have been identified and based on our resource position, we should be able to engage the service of at least a few of these psychiatrists in the first phase and also to upscale our intervention where detox is concerned,” he stated.
Adding to this, Director of DREAM Francis Kharshiing said, “We have only 11 psychiatrists in the state and most of them are based in Shillong. We are having a crisis. This is one issue which we need to address.”
He said that the government is looking forward to having one detox centre in each district. At present, there are only two government detox centres – Tura and Shillong.
“Although there are many private detox centres, we are more concerned about the marginalised youth of our society and those from BPL families. However, due to shortage of psychiatrists, we are unable to open detox centres,” he expressed.
Kharshiing informed that he had a discussion with the Kerala Psychiatric Society during his visit to Kerala and they have expressed their willingness to extend their services in the state of Meghalaya.
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