School Of Psychiatric Clinical Officers Butabika

Message from the Principal

PCO training was started in 1978. The psychiatric clinical officers’ training in Uganda is a brain child of the department of psychiatry at Makerere university which makes the 21 or more departments that make up the faculty of medicine.

The department of psychiatry contributes to the training of competent high quality health care workers. The wish of the department is for students to understand the total picture of patients’ problems for effective overall management including curative services, disease prevention, health promotion, rehabilitation based on careful collection of clinical data in biological, social, psychological and cultural/traditional domain of human experience.

HISTORY OF MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

The care of people living with mental illness began at Hoima “asylum” as part of prison theme in 1930 mainly as custodial measure. The place was small and over crowded and lacked the facilities suitable for modern psychiatric care.  Due to the increasing number of people living with mental illness, a proper hospital was constructed at Mulago in 1939 and by 1940 patients were transferred in from Hoima.

A national referral mental hospital was built and opened in1955 at Butabika in Nakawa Division near the shores of Lake Victoria in Kampala District.

By the time of Uganda’s Independence in 1962, the health service network in Uganda was reputed to have been one of the best in sub-Saharan Africa.

Psychiatric services were managed by a team of 11 psychiatrists, 7 social workers and 1 clinical psychologist at the time of a military coup of 1971. Psychiatric service units had been established at 8 regional hospitals in Uganda (Jinja, Mbale, Soroti, Lira, Gulu, Mbarara, Kabale and Hoima). Each psychiatric unit would be visited once a month by a psychiatrist. However, following the political and civil strife in Uganda for more than twenty years, the quality of mental health services along with general health care deteriorated to unimaginable proportions.

After establishing peace, security, law and order in Uganda in 1986, the government of Uganda had adopted primary health care as the strategy for the delivery of health services including mental health care.

According to the present national mental health policy draft, mental health is integrated into primary health care network in the country. The primary care workers at the community level were to be trained to be able to recognize, manage simple cases of emotional disorders at primary health care level and refer

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