inp.polri.go.id -  The Indonesian Ministry of Health revealed an increase in the percentage of people experiencing mental health disorders in recent years. Based on the results of the General Health Research conducted by the Ministry of Health in 2018, the prevalence of households with members suffering from schizophrenia increased from 1.7 per mil to 7 per mil in 2018. Mental-emotional disorders in the population under 15 years of age also increased from 6.1% or about 12 million people (General Health Research 2013) to 9.8% or about 20 million people. “This condition is made worse by COVID-19. During the pandemic, mental health problems were reported to have increased by 64.3% both due to suffering from the COVID-19 disease and socio-economic problems as a result of the pandemic," explained Ministry of Helath Director General of Public Health, Maria Endang Sumiwi in one of her statements, Tuesday (10/11). According to her, the increase in mental health problems is caused by several factors, one of which is the lack of health service facilities and psychologists. "We also see from the existing data, currently only about 50% of our 10,321 Community Health Centers units are able to provide mental health services," said Maria Endang Sumiwi. Likewise, the number of mental health services in hospitals is also not evenly distributed. There are still 4 provinces that do not yet have mental hospitals and only 40% of general hospitals have mental health service facilities. This condition is directly proportional to the availability of mental health services at Health Service Facilities and Community Health Centers, the current number of psychiatrists is not yet sufficient. The ratio of psychiatrists in Indonesia is still very unbalanced, which scales in 1:200,000. This means that every 1 psychiatrist must serve 200,000 people. This ratio is still far from the standard set by WHO which requires the scales of 1:30,000. Not only in terms of numbers, the distribution of psychiatrists is also not evenly distributed. Still concentrated in big cities only.