PUBLISHED : 17 Feb 2024 at 05:30
The National Committee on Mental Health is seeking an amendment to the Mental Health Act (2008) to create a rehabilitation fund.
During its first meeting of the year recently, the committee, led by Deputy Prime Minister Somsak Thepsutin, agreed to come up with a new plan to prevent patients with serious mental disorders from lapsing into violence.
Mr Somsak said 15,000 of 42,629 mental health patients involved in acts of violence over the last year were new cases and could be linked to the country’s ever-growing drug problem.
Mr Somsak said the Department of Mental Health (DMH) is working on rehabilitation, aiming to reduce violence and also prevent patients from returning to drugs. Rehab needs a large amount of funding, yet nothing in the Mental Health Act provides for such a fund, he said.
In a broader context, Dudsadee Juengsirakulwit, director of the DMH’s Mental Health Service Administration Bureau, said the department’s budget is equal to 50 baht per person, much lower than the 250 baht per person in other countries. The panel discussed a law change which would help raise further funding, he said.
DMH director-general Pongkasem Khaimook said the panel considered creating a fund to help raise extra money, using capital from the Office of the Narcotic Control Board’s fund. He said Mr Somsak, as a former justice minister, is aware of the large amounts of assets the ONCB has seized in drug-related cases, which could be put to good use in mental health support.