Mental Health Sector Severely Underfunded
The mental health sector faces a sever lack of funding that could ultimately undermine Cambodia’s development and the governemnt’s own health care goals, concludes a new report by the human rights law center at Fordham University in New York. In a comparative study on Cambodia’s mental care sector released this week. researchers from Fordham’s Leitner Center for International Law and Justice paint a picture of an overburdened mental health care system struggling to treat patients who are routinely stigmatized and ignored. … According to a Cambodian health official quoted in the report, just $30,000 per year is budgeted to mental health care, out of a total health care budget of $150 million. … And in a country with a population of nearly 15 million people, there are about 40 psychiatrists and an equal number of psychiatric nurses. …
