Nepal Mental Health Project - Rebuilding Hope

by Robyn Murray, Dr Nick Burns, and team, May 2022

Orange Daybreak is the sponsor club for this project under RAWCS. It began in 2012 after we visited some mental health services in Kathmandu when Mary Brell led the initial Rotary Daybreak team.

With colleagues such as Prabhat Kiran Pradhan (PK) in Nepal, the project is led in Australia by Robyn Murray and Dr Nick Burns, senior psychiatrist, Sydney/Orange, with a team of skilled clinicians - Dr Scott Hedley, psychiatrist, Orange, Peter Warren, psychologist, Orange, Lynette Bullen, drug and alcohol counsellor, Nanette Fogarty, psychogeriatric nurse, Orange, and Naidene Jones, nurse practitioner, Sydney. With COVID of course we have not visited Nepal since 2019. We plan to go in November 2023 and are looking at a trek also to the remote Mustang area of the country.

We have still kept up our support for our Nepali services during the last year.
Led by Scott and Naidene, the team have been working with Chhahari, a street-front service for people who are homeless and experiencing schizophrenia, with supervision via Skype. Funding is also provided by Peter Warren and his wife Kate Baxter from Orange for medications. And this year through donations we funded Chhahari $14,000 to be able to ‘keep afloat’ and to pay staff. We completed an MOU with their Board. They report back that they have been able to support 130 clients (Male:76 and Female: 54), either through the provision of medical treatment costs, home and ‘street’ visits, counseling, access to government social funds, and daycare at their Welcome Centre. They note “...home visits allow the fieldworkers to build a one-on-one relationship with the clients and carers, and experience their daily challenges and struggles first hand. Clients and carers often expressed how special and important these visits made them feel, and that Chhahari staff are very caring.”

T.U.T.H. is the key university teaching hospital in Kathmandu. The psychology and psychiatry department has been funded through Rotary Daybreak in past years for refurbishment of counselling and training rooms. We were able to fund an additional $1,500 this year to further assist them. They have been hit hard with COVID but are starting to think ahead and Peter Warren and the team will do joint on-line training workshops with them later this year.