The State Department for Public Service is in the process of putting in place the Kenya Mental Health Action Plan (2021-2025) to address related challenges affecting public officers
Public Service Principal Secretary Ms. Mary Kimonye said the Action Plan will monitor, report and design appropriate mental health interventions mechanism to appreciate the important role of public servants in national development processes.
Kimonye said once the draft has been discussed and passed by the technical committee for implementation, several measures to enhance the mental well-being of public servants will be adhered to as guided by the action plan.
The measures include development and rolling out of essential counselling programme through capacity building of public servants as mental health champions in ministries, counties, departments and agencies.
She said Public Service has not been spared by the mental health challenge stating that in the Service, rise in mental health concerns is evident through increase in alcohol and substance use, suicides, anxiety disorders, occupational injuries, workplace conflicts and absenteeism leading to a decline in quality of service delivered and productivity among officers.
The PS made the remarks on Friday in a speech read on her behalf by the Human Resource Management Secretary from the Department, Ms. Mary Maungu during the Stakeholders Participation on Framework for Mental Health Monitoring and Evaluation in the Public Service held at Kenyatta International Convention Centre, Nairobi.
Kimonye said available statistics indicate that Kenya suffers a heavy mental health burden evident by increasing cases of suicide, anxiety disorders, domestic and social violence and hate crimes among others with one in every 10 people suffering from a mental disorder.
“Globally, there is an increasing concern on mental health issues as observed by the World Health Organization (WHO,2021) with around 450 million people currently suffering from such conditions,” said Kimonye.
She added that according to the report a total of 264 million people were suffering from depression, placing mental disorders among the leading causes of ill-health and disability worldwide
The PS revealed that to date, the service has 302 mental health champions who are already complementing psychological counsellors in the service.
She noted that the public service is also reviewing scope and services offered through the counselling unit and rebranding them into counselling and wellness units as well as strengthening counselling services by recruiting and deployment of more counsellors in the service.
Taking stakeholders through the Draft framework, the Inter-Agency Technical Committee Chairperson and Director Counselling Services, State Department for Public Service Grace Wanjiku said it is necessary for people to understand the need to address mental health to be able to prevent illnesses.
“To make the services cheaper, we are developing public servants by taking them through a two weeks course called Essential Counselling Skill Programme, at the Kenya School of Government, where we will equip them with the prerequisite, skills, knowledge and competence, they require to be the mental health champions,” said Wanjiku.
She cited depression, anxiety and use of substance as the first three mental health disorders singling out use of substance as the main cause followed by depression, stress, suicide, femicide and homicide in public service.
Wanjiku mentioned that Covid-19 worsened the mental health well-being of public servants with teachers and police officers mainly affected.
She encouraged the affected public servants to make good use of their National Hospital Insurance Fund cover to seek medication as early as possible.
“Mental health is so serious that we cannot continue treating it casually, we need to train as many public servants as possible to complement psychological counsellors in containing the situation,” said the Director.
By Catherine Muindi
