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AIIMS de-addiction centre turns docs into 'super-specialists'

The super-specialisation course is for three years

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Withe the rising number of drug-addiction cases the capital is seeing an increase in de-addiction centres.

Doctors report that a rising number of children and teenagers addicted to smack, cannabis, and injected drugs, are coming to them to be treated. Patients include both street-children and those from more affluent backgrounds.

However, while the increase in the number of de-addiction centres is an encouraging sign, doctors feel that there are still problems. According to Doctor Rakesh Chadda, Chief, (NDDTC) National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre, which comes under All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), treating the drug menace requires training psychiatrists to specialise in treating substance abuse.

With this in mind, the de-addiction centre started its 'Addiction Psychiatry' program a year ago where they will train psychiatrists to become super-specialists. Incidentally, this is the first and only course in India which does this.

"The main idea in starting this course is to create specialists in substance use disorders," said Doctor Chadda. "The problem is made more difficult by the fact that we do not have a large number of psychiatrists in India, (currently about 6000). But the country also needs some of these psychiatrists to become super-specialists, who can provide better care for addicts with certain type of addiction," he said.

20-year-old Sohan (name changed) was admitted to the NDDTC 10 days back after he was diagnosed with an addiction to Zolfresh, a drug used as a sedative in sleeping disorder. The bio-technology student from Delhi University had been undergoing treatment on and off for the past several years until he was put under the addiction centre. Here, he gets counselling from doctors who specialise in his type of addiction.

This course is a doctorate in Medicine, a three-year super-specialisation course after the MD in Psychiatry. This program is aimed at exclusively working in the area of substance use disorders, learning about its causation, clinical presentation, prevention, public health issues, etc.

Doctor Shalini Singh, an MD psychiatrist enrolled in the course says that super-specialisation helps the psychiatrist better understand the nature of the addiction, the medicines and the dosage that is required.

ARMY DOC TO JOIN

  • The centre currently has six doctors studying the super-specialised three-year-course, which started with two in January 2016 and took two more students every six months.
     
  • Also, in a first of its kind collaboration, an Army doctor is joining the course on July 1. Some private hospitals have already shown interest in hiring these specialist.
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