NIMHANS Digital Academy: General physicians get trained to tackle mental health issues

BENGALURU: NIMHANS Digital Academy, started six months back to train general physicians in treating common psychiatric illnesses and giving expert opinion through telemedicine, has won praise from Union Health Minister J P Nadda.  

At the recently-held NIMHANS convocation, Nadda said, “NIMHANS successfully introduced short-term educational courses on the digital platform; this is indeed novel and also innovative. Surely NIMHANS would plan scaling up this activity to add to the number of mental health professionals in the country.”

The NIMHANS Digital Academy (NDA), launched in July 2018 to fill the shortage in mental health human resources, leveraging on telemedicine, has so far trained 100 physicians and 80 nurses, psychologists and social workers. To access this facility, doctors need to log into the network through their mobile phones, post their questions, case details and pictures, and get advice from NIMHANS specialists on issues such as insomnia, depression, and substance abuse.

“People in rural areas have to travel long distances to seek medical advice for mental issues. NIMHANS Digital Academy bridges this gap,” Dr B N Gangadhar, director, NDA, said. “We are monitoring the mental health programmes in all districts in Karnataka through telemedicine services. NDA is the academic part while telemedicine is the clinical part of it,” he added.

General physicians are being trained to identify and tackle common symptoms like irritability and depression. This reduces the burden on mental health professionals.

Giving the example of Beggars’ Colony on Magadi Road, Gangadhar said, “Most of the 650 people living there have mental illnesses. Using telemedicine, a doctor sitting here will address the patient’s patients. We intend to reach out to doctors in jails as well.”

In Mandya district too, every person will soon have access to mental health advice through local doctors. If successful, it will be replicated in other districts as well, Gangadhar added.

Dr Prabhat Chand, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Centre for Deaddiction Medicine, NIMHANS, who heads NDA, said the objective is to democratise psychiatric knowledge.