Three per cent of Sri Lanka’s population suffer from some kind of mental illness and the country has been rated high on the list where suicides and alcohol abuse is concerned, according a World Health Organization report.

However, of 152 countries in the world Sri Lanka, Chile and Brazil have shown a national level of success with mental health intervention, it said.

A spokesman for the Health Ministry said yesterday the WHO had reported tsunami victims as being mentally traumatized – a majority of them being from the areas affected by the 2004 disaster. According to the Mental Health Update of the WHO for 2008 the others who are affected are those in the conflict affected areas.

"Mental health services have hardly developed in these areas. Even in areas such as Nuwara Eliya, Puttalam and Kegalle one does not see much development in the mental health service. The access to mental health is limited and grossly disproportionate from one area to another. For instance the main mental health hospital is situated in Colombo while there are hospital wards available to mental health patients in other parts of the country," he said.

A major development in mental health was when the government approved the mental health policy in 2005. The spokesman said the technical support for this was provided by the WHO. The policy prioritized the development of community based mental health services and the decentralization of services. The process involved downsizing of big mental hospitals with provision of local medical health facilities.

He said the WHO mental health team had identified priority areas of work to develop and decentralize mental health care. Therefore improving peoples’ health and psychological wellbeing has been one of the priority objectives of the WHO office in Sri Lanka from 2006 to 2011.

He said the governments of Finland, Ireland and the WHO in collaboration with World Vision Australia has already implemented mental health development and community based mental health programs in Jaffna, Kalmunai, Batticaloa, Kalutara, Hambantota. Matara and Galle.

Around 3,000 mental patients live in mental hospitals around Colombo. 800 of them are women who are warded in the Mulleriyawa mental hospital. Most of them are no longer ill. But many have been forced to stay in the hospital for several years and have lost contact with families and their communities. "The reason for this is that people fear the stigma attached to having a mental patient at home. Therefore they don’t come for their patients.