Number of trained psychiatrists in Cambodia? 35. Number of trained psychiatric nurses? 45.Cambodia's population? More than 14 million.
This almost total inaccessibility to mental health care, described as "critically deficient and "alarming" in a recent report, has led to many overwhelmed Cambodians caging seriously mentally-ill family members for the protection of all concerned. (the report, rather unhelpfully, puts the figure of mentally ill people being locked up at between 10 and 40%)
Such low numbers of mental health specialists is made even more acute by the high numbers of Cambodians suffering post-traumatic stress; the disorder not only strikes those who went through the Khmer Rouge period but is also past down by grandparents and parents to the next generation.
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