National Mental Health Survey of India 2015-16

NMHS
distribution, inadequate utilisation and lack
of clarity on utilisation mechanisms. Most of
the allocated budget for mental health was
spent on staff salaries and the procurement
of medicines. The utilisation of the allocated
budget was not reported by most states
indicating a lack of clarity in programme
planning and implementation, which is
a bigger concern than non-availability of
funds. Gujarat and West Bengal reported
utilization of 71% and 83% of allocated
funds.
Figure 11: Mental health financing
WB
UP
TN
RJ
PB
MN
MP
KL
JH
GJ
CG
AS
0 2 4 6 8 10
5.13 Health Education Activities in Mental Health
Information, Education and Communication
(IEC) activities are essential components of
any health programme. In the context of
mental health, the need for IEC activity is
exemplified by low mental health literacy,
prevailing stigma, availability and utilisation
of services and all these have an adverse
effect on health seeking behaviour for mental
health problems.
Assessment of IEC materials and health
education activities at the state level
revealed that IEC material were available in
local languages. IEC activities were carried
out in >50% of the districts in the states of
Kerala and Gujarat, while they were used
in less than 50% of the districts in Tamil
Nadu, Assam, Manipur and Punjab. Limited
IEC activities were reported from Madhya
Pradesh, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh and
none in chhatttisgarh (Figure 12).
IEC activities are usually carried out using
traditional methods like pamphlets, posters,
videos and supplemented with general
education material along with traditional
methods of songs, dramas, newspaper and
television articles and stories. In addition,
in recent times social media has emerged as
a mass media channel for IEC. The present
assessment revealed that only posters and
pamphlets were available and even these
were used infrequently for IEC. Most of
the other channels of communication were
not used and there was no state specific
plan for these activities. IEC activities
need to be population centric, targeted in
nature, uniform in coverage, highly visible,
continuous over time and should be a part of
larger state IEC activities.
SMHSA
57