According to data for the first six months of 2024, about 50,292 people suffering from mental disorders are registered in Kyrgyzstan. The head of the Consultative and Diagnostic Department of the Republican Center for Psychiatry and Narcology Gulnura Alimova told 24.kg news agency.
According to her information, it is including 28,200 men and 22,000 women, children under 14 — 5,800, teenagers — 2,000. During the specified period, 1,122 people were registered for the first time.
For comparison: 50,149 people with mental disorders were registered in 2023, in 2022 — 54,500.
When registered, the patient must be constantly under the supervision of a doctor. There are diseases, when remission occurs with the help of good supportive therapy. Such citizens are removed from the register by a medical commission, they are socially adapted, can work, and so on.
According to Gulnura Alimova, the diagnosis is also removed in rare cases. According to the law, the patient has the right to re-examination within five years.
«After inpatient treatment, the further treatment tactics for many patients are outpatient — in a polyclinic at the place of residence. There are quite a lot of psychiatrists in family medicine centers, and in their absence in the regions, family doctors can prescribe maintenance therapy drugs,» she said.
The head of the department noted that stigmatization is still widespread in society, when people with a diagnosis of a mental spectrum disorder are perceived too one-sidedly and considered dangerous.
«This is not always the case. If you take all the statistics, then a very small percentage of patients with a mental disorder committed some kind of illegal act. The main share of violations, including very serious ones, are committed by people who did not previously have such a diagnosis,» Gulnura Alimova noted.
«Even if a patient has a diagnosis, he or she is the same person as any other, and also has rights. If a person is responsible, takes medications, has good remission, then no one has the right to restrict him or her, lock them up, or isolate in any way. There are specialists for this, who assess a person’s condition. If he or she is not dangerous to themselves and society, then they cannot and should not be in some closed institution, as some people in society say. Isolation is applied in cases, where a person can pose a danger to himself or others, there are indications for hospitalization (the presence of active delusional-hallucinatory symptoms, suicidal tendencies, etc.),» she said.
October 10 is World Mental Health Day. It was established in 1992 to tell the world about the problems of mental illness, the reasons for their development and methods of treatment.