Hans Pols
University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
For a population of over 260 million people, Indonesia has a mere 1,000 psychiatrists and an equal number of clinical psychologists. Funding for mental health care is around 1% of the health budget. Under these conditions, providing adequate mental health care is an enormous challenge.
As part of an ARC-funded research project on mental health care in Indonesia with Profs Byron Good and Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good (Harvard University), we interviewed over 400 Indonesian psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric nurses, other health personnel, and patient advocates. We asked them to tell us about successful initiatives in mental health which could be replicated elsewhere. We also organised a workshop in Yogyakarta to formulate ideas on the future of mental health care in Indonesia. The results were published in a 2-volume edited book, Jiwa Sehat, Negara Kuat in 2019 (an English version is in preparation). In this presentation, I will share some of the results of these discussions. I will specifically focus on the requirement of the new health insurance system (BPJS) to move mental health care to community mental health centres.
Biography: To come