Mental health issues: Psychiatrist underscores need for raising awareness.

LAHORE -- Pakistani-American adult, child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr Rizwan Malik says behavioral and psychiatric disorders are as important to address as other medical illnesses and there is need to create maximum awareness about diagnosis and treatment of these disorders.

He was addressing a seminar on 'A brief overview of psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents' at the Punjab University's Center for Clinical Psychology (CCP) on Thursday.

He said depression would be among the most widespread diseases of the world in the next few years.

Dr Malik said there was a severe shortage of qualified child psychiatrists in Pakistan and there was need to create awareness among people to identify and work on various resources to help thousands of children who were not either properly diagnosed or they were subsequently placed on medications for their particular presentation.

He said dearth of trained practitioners was also faced by the western world and only one trained psychiatrist was available for 100,000 children facing behavioral and psychiatric disorders.

Dr Malik said there was need to remove taboos attached with mental illnesses to save precious human lives and provide healthy living conditions to those suffering from it. He said psychiatrists and psychologists needed to work together to provide coping skills to those suffering by organising constant therapy sessions besides prescription of medicines.

He said it was his dream to initiate massive awareness of autism in Pakistan and he would build an outpatient clinic in Lahore to treat children who have severe behavioral and psychiatric disorders.

Dr Malik who has been the medical director of a 200-bed psychiatric hospital in Washington DC, further said the federal and provincial governments in Pakistan and other institutions including universities, colleges and schools needed to make concerted efforts to fight the menace of rising drug abuse among the youth.

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