Senator vouches for community approach in mental health crisis

Nominated Senator Sylvia Kasanga is advocating for a community-based approach in dealing with mental health.

Kasanga is also the sponsor of the Mental Health Bill in the Senate.

 “If we are going to be sincere as a leadership in dealing with the critical issue of mental health, we should not be building institutions of mental health, but focusing more on establishing a community-based approach,” she said during the launch of International Institute for Legislative Affairs (ILA) Strategic Plan 2022/26 in Nairobi recently.

In the Strategic Plan, ILA is prioritising issues including mental health, road safety, illicit financial flows and unclaimed financial assets in its policy advocacy activities.

Strategic Plan is organised into five sections that deal with a number of those social issues.

Kasanga projected that the number of people battling mental health could be higher than the World Health Organisation’s estimates of one out of four Kenyans.

“With the current economic crisis, the number of people with mental health condition could be two out of four,” Kasanga said.

She has called on the national and county governments to focus on building an army of community health workers well versed on mental health to avert a further crisis.

“There is a need for us to have battalions of community-based health workers going door-to-door, raising awareness, fighting the stigma, and just bringing awareness and understanding of what mental health is,” she said.

Remarkable efforts

Bill is advocating for establishing a pool of community-based health workers who will also talk to people about nutrition, education, social welfare, and ethical issues that also lead to mental health conditions, family values, and all those related matters.

“Until as a society we organise ourselves to deal with those pertinent issues at the family level, we will not be able to deal with this rising epidemic as it is; it has to start at the family level,” she noted.

Kasanga said the Bill, which requires only a single vote at the Senate, will address most of the interventions needed to avert impending fatalities from mental health, if it becomes law.