Dr. Rajani P, Director, Department of Health & Family Welfare, Government of Karnataka, showcased the initiative of the government through a presentation on “Karnataka Tele mentoring & Monitoring (KTM) program for primary care psychiatry” in the 5th BW Businessworld Digital India Summit & Awards.
Dr. Rajani addressed the importance of mental health and wellbeing of an individual. According to reports, Psychiatric disorders are the major contributor of death. The situation could have been different if primary health care doctors have started first line treatment for patients. After knowing this fact, Government of Karnataka started an initiative named, Tele On-Consultation Training (Tele-OCT) by psychiatrists at Public healthcare (PHC) to teach first line treatment in a classroom set-up.
The biggest challenge with this classroom training program was that there was a gap of clinical knowledge between the professional psychiatrists and the PHC doctors. They were not able to grasp the information imparted by the professionals.
But after 4 months of sessions, this initiative taught 90 PHC doctors of Karnataka with KTM live sessions with professional psychiatrists. And this has treated and benefitted around 15,000 people in Karnataka PHCs.
For people, Tele-OCT have saved the time, energy and money with improved mental health conditions which has reduced the burden of psychiatric issues and a decrease in suicide rate in the society.
The presentation ended with Dr. Rajani’s words where she said, “No health without mental health.”
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