What is it about?
This paper described how psychiatry teams in major hospitals in Sri Lanka gradually transformed to start delivering psychiatric care beyond the walls of the big hospital. The paper also covers how they adapted, innovated and advocated for the benefit of the patient and the family in the community.
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Why is it important?
In other countries, separate teams are set up to care for the patients living in the community. However, in underdeveloped countries such as Sri Lanka, that model is difficult to afford and the facilities and services available to the patient and the family in the community are limited. While the hospital based teams in Sri Lanka have taken over the delivery of psychiatric care in the community, closer to the home of the patient, they have also started to network with other services, mainly the civil administration (e.g. elderly care officer, probation officer) to provide a more comprehensive array of services in the community.
Perspectives
I have been in the thick of the development of this model as I was the first ever consultant psychiatrist at General Hospital, Ampara, Eastern Province from 2008 to 2010, during the last phase of the Sri Lankan civil war. I was able to draw from lessons I had learnt in Victoria, Australia in delivery of community psychiatry care in forging a full array of services in Ampara for the inpatients, outpatients and the patients living in remote areas.
Dr. Mahesh Rajasuriya
University of Colombo
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Community-based psychiatry services in Sri Lanka: A new model in the making, Consortium Psychiatricum, December 2021, ECO-Vector LLC,
DOI: 10.17816/cp106.
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