The profession of psychiatric nurses needs to be regulated, the outgoing president of their association is urging the authorities, ahead of plans to open a new acute mental health facility.

The Maltese Association of Psychiatric Nurses is this year celebrating 10 years from its foundation, however, there was still “a lot to be done”, Kevin Gafa said at a conference yesterday.

“To date, our profession is still not properly regulated and standards for our profession are not yet embodied in the Maltese Nursing and Midwifery council regulations.

“We strongly believe that standards of practice provide practical benchmarks to guide and measure how care is provided. Without a clear goal for practice, we cannot, as a profession, properly evaluate how well we are performing,” he said.

Mr Gafa, who has been at the helm of the association for 10 years, urged the authorities to resolve this situation as soon as possible, especially in light of plans for a new acute mental health facility in the coming years.

Practitioners and researchers at the conference called for more collective research. Chairing the event, Martin Ward, president of Horatio (the association of European psychiatric nurses), said that while suicide levels were on the rise, changes within the mental health field could only come about if academia and politically driven re-searchers worked collectively.

Keynote speaker Patrick Callaghan, dean of the Health Sciences School at the University of Nottingham, also called for a wide approach when dealing with mental health issues.

While managing to decrease suicide rates within groups at risk by focusing resources on them, other groups, which were neglected as a consequence, saw an increase in the number of committed suicides.

“Ten years ago, the UK started focusing on young people, and while we managed to reduce suicide within that group, the rates among middle-aged men have increased,” he told this newspaper.

Prof. Callaghan meanwhile noted that an increase in mental health problems was often tied to an increase in people suffering from depression.

Depression was the second commonest cause of disability worldwide, and considering that it was strongly linked to suicide, more resources needed to be injected into preventing the disorder, he added.

During the conference Prof. Callaghan noted that mental health was not only tied to the rate of suicide attempts, but also to severe medical problems such as diabetes and cardiovascular disorder. Mental health issues shortened life expectancy by up to 20 years and this was an “international scandal”, he said.

Another speaker at the conference, psychiatric nurse Isaura Camilleri spoke of the lived experiences of Maltese caregivers of people with depression.

The responsibility of caring for a person with depression coupled with the pressure of maintaining a family could have detrimental effects on caregivers, which could lead to stress and burnout.

Still, healthcare professionals continued to focus on the person with depression, neglecting the welfare of the caregivers. Ms Camilleri said practitioners should acknowledge that even those supporting people with depression for more than 11 years were still finding challenges.

Depression

• Depression is the third highest ranked burden of disease according to the World Health Organisation.

• Depression is expected to be the leading cause of disease burden by 2030.

• There are currently 30,000 Maltese citizens with chronic depression.

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