Mental health in the Philippines is a survey of the status of psychological , psychiatric , and emotional health care in the Philippines from both past and present programs. There are three tiers in the health care system : primary, secondary, and tertiary. The primary health care tier serves as a patient's first point of contact with a health professional who can provide outpatient medical care.
Mental health care specialists, which belong to secondary health care, include psychologists and psychiatrists. In the tertiary health care, patient would be referred to institutions if the mental illness needs specialized care that is beyond the capabilities of the specialist. Some health care systems put psychologists and psychiatrists under the category of primary care providers.
In this case, short hospital visits and consultation-liaison services to other medical departments would fall under secondary health care. Mental health facilities and institutions are maintained in the Philippines by both private and public groups but access to them remains uneven throughout the country.
The hectare site is located in Mandaluyong. The institution officially opened on December 17, , accepting patients who were all crowding in San Lazaro Hospital. In , the bed capacity was increased to , although the total number of patients was over According to the NCMH website, the hospital is "mandated to render a comprehensive preventive, promotive, curative and rehabilitative range of quality mental health services nationwide".
Aside from this, NCMH also offers a 4-year psychiatric residency training program for doctors and a 2-year psychiatric nursing program for nurses specializing in psychiatric care. There are also affiliation programs that cater to students from the fields of psychology, pharmacy, and nursing, among others. NCMH currently occupies As of , the numbers of staff are as follows: 88 doctors, nursing staff, medical ancillary personnel, and administrative support staff. The hospital also received from the government a budget allocation worth PHP , , , which costs an average of Php Currently, NCMH has a bed capacity of 4, and serves an average of 3, in-patients on a daily basis, in addition to 56, outpatients per year.
