Residential mental health care centres will be set up in four districts in Karnataka in two months, according to KA Ashok Pai, Chairman of the Karnataka State Mental Health Task Force.
Addressing presspersons here on Saturday, he said these residential mental health care centres will be set up in Dakshina Kannada, Shimoga and Gulbarga districts. One more such centre will be set up either in Kolar or in Chamrajnagar district, he said.
The modalities on setting up of these mental health care centres will be decided at a meeting of the task force in Shimoga on August 2, he said.
These centres can treat around 60 chronically ill mentally disabled patients.
Of the six crore people in Karnataka, nearly 75 lakh people need routine mental health services.
At present, Karnataka has around 250 psychiatrists, 200 clinical psychologists and an equal number of psychiatric social workers. In spite of this, four districts in the state do not have basic mental health care facilities, he said.
There are around 300 in-patient beds in hospitals in the state. This excludes NIMHANS (National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences) in Bangalore and DIMHANS (Dharwad Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences) in Dharwad.
To a query on the influence of social media in day-to-day life, he said it is a sort of addiction just like addiction to drugs and alcohol. More than 700 cases of addiction to social media have been reported till now, he added.