DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH UNDER THE MENTAL HEALTH ACT

After reading Duties and Responsibilities of the Department of Health under the Mental Health Act, read also Treatment and Consent of Service Users under the Mental Health Act

• The Department of Health (DOH) shall ensure that a safe, therapeutic, and hygienic environment with sufficient privacy exists in all mental health facilities

• The DOH shall ensure that all public and private mental health institution uphold the right of patients to be protected against torture or cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment

• The DOH shall establish a balanced system of community-based and hospital-based mental health services at all levels of the public health care system

What are the duties and responsibilities of the Department of Health (DOH) under the Mental Health Act?

The law says:

To achieve the policy and objectives of the Mental Health Act, the DOH shall:

1. Formulate, develop, and implement a national mental health program. In coordination with relevant government agencies, create a framework for Mental Health Awareness Program to promote effective strategies regarding mental healthcare, its components, and services, as well as to improve awareness on stigmatized medical conditions;

2. Ensure that a safe, therapeutic, and hygienic environment with sufficient privacy exists in all mental health facilities and, for this purpose, shall be responsible for the regulation, licensing, monitoring, and assessment of all mental health facilities;

3. Integrated mental health into the routine health information systems and identify, collate, routinely report and use core mental health data disaggregated by sex and age, and health outcomes, including data on complete and attempted suicides, in order to improve mental health service delivery, promotion and prevention strategies;

4. Improve research capacity and academic collaboration on national priorities for research in mental health, particularly operational research with direct relevance to service development, implementation, and the exercise of human rights by persons with mental health conditions, including establishment of centers of excellence;

5. Ensure that all public and private mental health institution uphold the right of patients to be protected against torture or cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment;

6. Coordinate with the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation to ensure that insurance packages equivalent to those covering physical disorders of comparable impact to the patient, as measured by Disability-Adjusted Life Year or other methodologies, are available to patients affected by mental health conditions;

7. Prohibit forced or inadequately remunerated labor within mental health facilities, unless such labor is justified as part of an accepted therapeutic treatment program;

8. Provide support services for families and co-workers of service users, mental professionals, workers, and other service providers;

9. Develop alternatives to institutionalization, particularly community, recovery-based approaches to treatment aimed at receiving patients discharged from hospitals, meeting the needs expressed by persons with mental health conditions, and respecting their autonomy, decisions, dignity, and privacy;

10. Ensure that all health facilities shall establish their respective internal review boards. In consultation with stakeholders, the DOH shall promulgate the rules and regulations, necessary for the efficient disposition of all proceedings, matters, and cases referred to or reviewed by the internal review board;

11. Establish a balanced system of community-based and hospital-based mental health services at all levels of the public health care system from the barangay, municipal, city, provincial, regional to the national level; and

12. Ensure that all health workers shall undergo human rights trainings in coordination with appropriate agencies or organizations.

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