KUALA LUMPUR: The Alliance for Safe Community urged for the proposed National Centre of Excellence for Mental Health to be set up as soon as possible to help strengthen existing mental health programmes.
Its chairman, Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye, said the centre should develop effective and high-impact targeted prevention programmes, as well as build capacity involving sustainable community mental health services.
The centre should also act as a control and coordination centre for activities involving smart partnerships of public and private agencies in providing services towards the prevention of mental health problems and suicidal behaviour, he said.
"A National Centre of Excellence for Mental Health is timely to meet people's needs and minimise the mental health service gaps.
"It can also play a role to monitor strategies and activities in the National Strategic Plan for Mental Health," Lee said in a statement today.
He added that the centre should collaborate with agencies and non-governmental organisations to implement activities to improve community mental health literacy.
He said it should coordinate efforts with rescue agencies to respond to mental health crises through helplines.
Lee said special attention must be provided to coordination of training and building capacity, besides the need for research and translation of findings for policy development.
He added that the centre should play a leading role in mental health training and education, mental health promotion and mental illness prevention, mental health crisis intervention, mental health surveillance and mental health research and innovation.
"Looking after our mental health is as important as our physical health. They are complementary.
"We cannot have one without the other. There is no health without mental health.
"Mental health issues cannot be resolved overnight.
"They need constant attention and the building up of a reliable database.
"They are needed as a prerequisite for the establishment of such a centre that should address all aspects of prevention and advocacy, capacity development, resource sharing, research, monitoring and surveillance of mental health," he added.
In October last year, the Health Ministry announced it was conducting a study on the establishment of the National Centre of Excellence for Mental Health to minimise service gaps and further strengthen delivery of mental health services to the community.
