Walk-in Consultations at Polyclinics for Mental Health Issues

8 Dr Wan Rizal asked the Minister for Health whether there are plans to include mental health services in the polyclinics to be open to walk-ins, rather than through referrals or on an appointment basis, to reduce treatment delay of mental healthcare in the community.

The Senior Minister of State for Health (Dr Janil Puthucheary) (for the Minister for Health): Mr Speaker, strengthening mental health services in primary care has been one of the key focus areas under the Community Mental Health Masterplan. This is to ensure that persons with mental health conditions can access care closer to home and in a less stigmatising environment.

Over the years, we have worked with the polyclinic clusters to set up mental health services in polyclinics and gradually build up the capabilities of our primary care doctors to manage persons with mild to moderate mental health conditions. Persons with mental health concerns can walk in to polyclinics and they will be attended to by polyclinics doctors who will conduct preliminary assessment and provide appropriate management, including making a referral to the mental health services, where necessary.

Other than seeking help at the polyclinic, persons with mental health conditions can also seek care for mental health at nearby General Practitioner or GP clinics. Under the Mental Health General Practitioner Partnership Programme or MHGPP, we have trained over 220 GPs to identify, diagnose and manage persons with mental health issues in the community. These GPs are further supported by community intervention teams which provide allied-health services, such as needs assessment, psycho-social therapeutic intervention, counselling and psycho-education for persons with mental health conditions. Community Health Assist Scheme or CHAS subsidies are available for persons seeking mental healthcare with our MHGPP partners, who are also CHAS GP clinics.

In addition, persons with mental health conditions can also tap on other avenues of support available in the community, such as the community outreach teams, which provide basic emotional and psycho-social support and service linkage for persons with mental health issues. To date, we have a network of 43 community outreach teams across Singapore.

MOH will continue to work with polyclinics, GPs and community mental health partners to build up our mental health services in the community, so that holistic and timely support is provided for persons with mental health conditions.

Mr Speaker: Dr Wan Rizal.

Dr Wan Rizal (Jalan Besar): Mr Speaker, I thank the Senior Minister of State for the reply. With regards to the GP clinics that are already participating, there are really a lot more that are not. Is there a reason why some of these GP clinics are not keen to participate in such a partnership programme? Would the Ministry consider handing out incentives to encourage participation or even make such programmes mandatory for all GP clinics?

Dr Janil Puthucheary: Mr Speaker, I thank the Member for his questions. I think we have to take the view that GPs and their clinics have to do the broad base of primary care in terms of access. And then, when it comes to certain domains, people have to leverage on the strengths and skills sets that are available in that team. And so, we have GPs that go on to take special trainings so that they can provide mental healthcare services. Some will focus on dermatology; some will focus on children care services or maternal care services.

I think the key issue is to ensure that there is access for anybody who needs care for mental health condition. And they have a choice, in terms of going to the polyclinic or going to a private GP and that they then have a network of support services from the community care teams, the allied healthcare teams and the referral services in the hospitals, and that these can be accessed either by the polyclinic route or by the private GP. That is the intent to which we work towards.

I think to insist that this be compulsory across every single clinic perhaps is not in the right spirit of how care should be delivered. You make sure that the broad base of access is there and for certain specialised domains, you improve understanding, you improve access and the teams should then make referral to GPs, polyclinics and centres where they have the full suite of services to be able to care for people with these conditions.