Sri Sathya Sai International Organization

Dr. Meera Narasimhan is Associate Provost of Health Sciences at the University of South Carolina. She is also Chairman and Professor of Neuropsychiatry at the University of South Carolina. She stresses that Ideal healthcare includes mental healthcare with treatment of the mind, body and spirit of the patient. Treatment of mental illness is crucial in caring for physical illness. She describes the worldwide increasing rates of prevalence of depression and other mental illnesses.   Increased awareness of mental illness is needed by all healthcare providers for holistic patient care. Dr. Narasimhan stresses the importance of de-stigmatizing mental illness and providing more preventive mental healthcare. There is a great shortage of mental health professionals throughout the world.  Dr. Narasimhan describes the model which she helped develop in the state of South Carolina for providing mental healthcare using telemedicine to increase access to mental healthcare providers, especially to rural areas. This method has been expanded to other healthcare specialties in South Carolina. Dr. Narasimhan also describes use of this model of healthcare delivery in Tamil Nadu, India.  This is yet another example of innovation with love and compassion helping expand access to ideal healthcare worldwide.