Country's sole psychiatrist sets sights on mental health remodel in war-torn South Sudan

Dr. Atong Ayuel Longar treated this unclear man, who was found cumulative to a tree, right, and is now enjoying a healthier life, seen left.

Dr. Atong Ayuel Longar treated this unclear man, who was found cumulative to a tree, right, and is now enjoying a healthier life, seen left.

South Sudan’s solitary protected psychiatrist is on a idea to renovate mental health caring in a nation of some-more than 12 million. In South Sudanese culture, mental illness is mostly believed to be caused by antagonistic possession of spirits, immorality curses or punishment from God, and patients are frequently endorsed to be kept cumulative to trees or posts by a non-licensed “medicine man.”

Among a educated, psychoanalysis is mostly looked down on as a obtuse margin of medicine. The miss of funding, resources and support make a margin unappealing to medical students seeking a career in health care.

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“It’s not appealing in South Sudan,” Dr. Atong Ayuel Longar, South Sudan’s usually psychiatrist and an partner highbrow in psychoanalysis during University of Juba, told FoxNews.com. “It’s low paid and there’s a lot of work. There’s no private practice.”

Add to that a miss of honour a position garners from others in a country, and it creates it formidable to weed out critical candidates. According to Longar, there are 29 people job themselves psychiatrists who have no clinical training or experience.

“Other doctors contend when we are incompetent, we turn a psychiatrist,” Longar said. “It’s really tough when we get someone who’s shining in university to turn a psychiatrist. When we graduated we was a first, best student.”

Faced with a choice between apropos an OB-GYN or psychiatrist, Longar went with where she felt her nation indispensable her most. Her day starts with saying adult to 30 patients in clinic, and afterwards includes creation rounds in a psychiatric ward, training an educational session, environment mental health policies and formulating mental caring protocols.

Longar and her staff of nurses and assistants onslaught to find drugs for their vast series of patients, many of who are struggling with piece abuse disorders that is delegate to a mishap of a abuse they’re pang from. Her sanatorium offers patients day therapy where they play music, emanate art, play soccer and recently began vocational therapy that includes carpentry, gardening and sewing.

Among a many hurdles that Longar faces is a miss of resources for mental health care. Juba Teaching Hospital’s psychoanalysis dialect offers only 12 beds for patients who are kept sealed adult due to miss of security. Insufficient infrastructure and bill creates it formidable for Longar to figure process for other health caring professionals to follow when traffic with a mentally ill patient.

Longar is also spearheading a plan called “Transforming a present, moulding a future,” that takes patients off a streets and gives them food, wardrobe and mental health care. Recently, a country’s health apportion helped wash and give haircuts to patients before outfitting them with garments and addressing their mental health.

Through her work, Longar wants to see some-more sustainability in a country’s mental health care. A vast partial of that is creation certain patients have a resources to continue medication, and that correct protocols are in place to safeguard they accept adequate mental health care. Her idea is to replicate a plan via a country, and residence psychosis in children before they are placed in danger.

One studious portion as a covenant to a success of a plan went from being cumulative to a tree in a bare for years on a recommendation of a “medicine man,” to achieving a healthy lifestyle, according to Longar. 

The plan is partial of a non-profit called Goats For a Old Goat, a gift started by Fox News writer Ellen Ratner, that is focused on Goats, Education, Medicine and Sustainability in South Sudan. Goats are donated for psychiatric patients who caring for a them and obtain divert from them to support their family. For some-more information and to donate, visit GoatsForTheOldGoat.com.
 

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