Almost 15 percent of Vietnamese suffer mental illnesses, said a health official at a seminar on healthcare for psychiatric patients on August 6.
The National Psychiatric Hospital No.1 director La Duc Cuong said Vietnam currently has 12 million people experiencing psychiatric ailments, accounting for 14.9 percent of the country’s population.
He used the number of patients receiving treatment at the Psychiatric Hospital in the Mekong delta province of Tien Giang as an example. The number of those being treated has increased from 9,261 in 2008, to 9,559 in 2009.
Deputy director of the Psychiatric Hospital No.2, Bui The Khanh, reckoned that the most common psychiatric ailments in Vietnam are dementia praecox, depression, epilepsy, mental disorders resulting from traffic accidents or due to excessive drinking.
