Article Sidebar
Published:
Jan 16, 2009Article Details
http://www.sajp.org.za/index.php/sajp/pages/view/policies#part_4
Copyright
The author(s) retain copyright on work published by AOSIS unless specified otherwise.
Licensing and publishing rights
Author(s) of work published by AOSIS are required to grant AOSIS the unlimited rights to publish the definitive work in any format, language and medium, for any lawful purpose.
AOSIS requires journal authors to publish their work in open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.
Read more here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
The authors retain the non-exclusive right to do anything they wish with the published article(s), provided attribution is given to the applicable journal with details of the original publication, as set out in the official citation of the article published in the journal. The retained right specifically includes the right to post the article on the authors’ or their institution’s websites or in institutional repositories.
Previously published work may have been published under a different licence. We advise the community that if they would like to reuse the work to consult the applicable licence at article level.
Main Article Content
Community psychiatry: An audit of the services in southern Gauteng
Abstract
Aim. To audit the community psychiatric services in southern Gauteng with a view to determining whether the objectives of the country\'s mental health legislation and policies are being achieved.
Results. Although southern Gauteng\'s community psychiatric clinics are situated in a primary health setting, primary health clinicians play no active role in the management of mentally
ill patients. Care is supplied mainly by specialist psychiatrists, psychiatric registrars (in training) and psychiatric nurses. For first appointments, a mean of 2 patients are seen per doctor per clinic day for a mean duration of 30 minutes. For followup appointments, a mean of 17 patients are seen per doctor per clinic day for a mean duration of 8 minutes. The waiting time for new patient appointments is a mean of 6 months. Follow-up patients are seen once a month by nursing staff and approximately once every 4 months by doctors. An average of 1 in 5 patients is treated with oral atypical antipsychotics; in
the majority of clinics, this is the total extent of care. However, where psychologists, social workers and occupational therapists are present, only 0.2% of all users have access to
them.
Conclusion. The community psychiatric services, although better than those in some other countries, fall short of what is required by South African legislation and policies. General
community health services ought to play an active role in the structure and delivery of psychiatric services by developing and strengthening the current limited services, with an emphasis on cost-effective and preventive approaches. Existing community
psychiatric services, if so transformed, could serve as a model for other countries in Africa.
South African Journal of Psychiatry Vol. 14 (2) 2008: pp. 36-43
