Yogyakarta- The few number of psychologists in Public Health Centers makes clinical psychology services for mental health in the community more limited. This condition increased the number of mental patients in some mental hospitals in regions. In fact, Australia, a state which has areas covering a continent only has one mental hospital.
Seeing this condition, Psychologist of Universitas Gadjah Mada, Prof. Johana Endang Prawitasari, expressed her concern and tried to develop a macro-applied clinical psychology to improve community mental health. The study was conducted over 25 years ago.
"Through micro-clinical psychology, it is impossible for us to handle individual service considering the huge number of our community. This is because psychiatric disorders cannot be handled by the physician physically alone, but it has entered the realm of psychology," Johana said to reporters after a seminar of clinical psychology for health and community mental health at Auditorium of Faculty of Psychology, Saturday (14/5).
Johana said that the use of clinical psychology is very relevant to be applied in Indonesia because it is in accordance with local wisdom and cultural characters of every region. Moreover, her macro-approach of clinical psychology is in accordance with the concept of Nusantara psychology which is being developed by Faculty of Psychology UGM, due to the fact that Western psychology approach that focuses on the handling of individual psychology is felt not suitable with the characteristics of Indonesian society. "Up to now, the handling of psychology is handled in a long time even taking as long as 5 years which focuses on the unconscious nerves," she said.
From some results of studies that have been done, the macro-psychology approach is able to handle conflicts among community groups in areas affected by disasters. One of the ways is to utilize the local wisdom, traditional arts, music and singing and performing arts method.
Johana said her experience in conducting macro-applied clinical psychology had also been done to reduce overuse injection in 24 Public Health Center in Gunung Kidul because the overuse of injections there had reached 70 percent. Meanwhile, WHO recommends doctors and nurses to do the rational use of drugs to patients to prevent the spread of HIV virus, the spread of viral and bacterial infections, so the use of injection should be reduced. Moreover, there is the habit when patients come to the doctor or nurses, they feel cured if they are injected.
"Through the method of group discussion among doctors, nurses and patients, we finally managed to reduce the overuse of injections from previously 70 percent to 20 percent," she said. The result was finally adopted in Cambodia, China, Nepal and India to reduce drug use through injection.
Meanwhile, Deputy Dean for Student Affairs, Alumni and Cooperation, Faculty of Psychology, said that psychologist should be assigned at each public health center. The government needs more psychologists who serve the public whether at the hospital and the public health clinic in the future.
She mentioned that some areas, such as Sleman Regency and Yogyakarta Municipality, have allocated special funds for the assignment of psychologists who are equal with general health workers in each public health clinic. "The policy of the central level already exists. It takes encouragement for each region to be able to provide the budget allocation to improve public health," she said.