Mental Healthcare in Cambodia Can't Cope. Phnom Penh, July, 2003.
Despite years and countless dollars of aid since the restoration of peace, Cambodia's psychiatric healthcare system can barely help sufferers of typical mental disease, let alone those who are haunted by the trauma of civil war and genocide. Western psychiatric methods do not work on the Cambodian psyche, though Filipino methods prove somewhat effective. There are only twenty-one qualified Cambodian psychiatrists....
more »Mental Healthcare in Cambodia Can't Cope. Phnom Penh, July, 2003.
Despite years and countless dollars of aid since the restoration of peace, Cambodia's psychiatric healthcare system can barely help sufferers of typical mental disease, let alone those who are haunted by the trauma of civil war and genocide. Western psychiatric methods do not work on the Cambodian psyche, though Filipino methods prove somewhat effective. There are only twenty-one qualified Cambodian psychiatrists. Impoverished villages commonly travel from the provinces to the mental health headquarters at Sihanouk Hospital in Phnom Penh rather than visiting satellite facilities often without medication for treatment. The centre treats around two hundred outpatients a day. To date, there is no inpatient facility in the country.
Though Japan has supported the training of medical students to qualify as psychiatric doctors, there is not enough funding to allow concurrent classes to graduate. Efforts are further hampered by the reluctance of medical students to choose the demanding vocation, preferring the more evident results of such fields as paediatrics.
©James Robert Fuller
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