PUTRAJAYA JUNE 25: The Psychosocial Support Assistance Line (PSAL) has received 122,328 calls since 1st January until 18th June 2021 and out of which 109,806 or 89.4 per cent are related to psychological issues affected from several problems such as out of jobs and losing income, lost of dependants, conflicts among family members and marriage problems.
Director General of Health, Tan Sri Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah said, since the Movement Control Order (MCO) has been imposed, the people have been emotionally affected and suffers from mental health.
He said, stressful life is not only experienced by the staffs in the public sector, health services and health staffs or front liners but also by the people in the community.
Dr. Noor Hisham said, among the problems raised by the people include emotional support/counselling (109,388), information about COVID-19 (6,163), family relationship issues (2,660), general report (2,526), needs/basic assistance (453), spiritual (446), health issues (437), child care (99), psychiatry (68), financial aid (59) and violence/domestic violence (29).
According to Dr. Noor Hisham, the Ministry of Health (MOH) has formed several initiatives to handle the stressful symptoms among the people such as cooperating with MERCY Malaysia that provides psychosocial support assistance services through calls based in CPRC (MOH) since 25th March 2020.
The telephone lines are managed by MOH psychology counselling officers and assisted by voluntary psychology officers from other agencies and NGOs.
“MOH also cooperates with government agencies like JAKIM, Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development, and they formed their own line such as KSK Care (JAKIM) and Talian KASIH,” Dr. Noor Hisham said in a statement here today.
Dr. Noor Hisham added, psychology expert services are also provided. They reported that the number of patients coming for consultations have also increased recently.
Meanwhile, in the fields such as hospitals and health clinics, Mental Health Psychosocial Support Service or MHPSS are also provided for the targeted groups such as person under surveillance (PUS) at the quarantine station and in the house, COVID-19 patients admitted to the hospital/PKRC, health workers working during the COVID-19 pandemic at the national, state and district, staff from other agencies involved in managing the COVID-19 pandemic and family members of an individual who have died due to COVID-19.-Malaysia World News
