A new specialist psychiatrist has taken over the work of Seiuliali'i  Dr George Tuitama and she has recommended the need for more awareness on mental health.

Dr Joyce Vida Sonoling from Papua New Guinea has joined the Ministry of Health while Seiuliali'i pursues his Masters in New Zealand. 

One of the first things she did was conduct a check-up at the Goshen Trust mental health facility at Moamoa on Wednesday morning. 

Dr Sonoling believes that awareness is the first way to go in tackling mental health issues but they need the help of the community in doing so.

"We have NGOs, churches, cultural groups, women's groups, and youth groups that can help us in this. We can do that by preparing our staff to be able to go out there and work with the community," she said. 

"We have a different environment, Samoa just like any other Pacific Islands, the service is under-developed." 

Dr Sonoling said it started from the family to the community and it helped the mental health service. She said there was a global burden of mental health illness.

She believes that the stigma and discrimination are culturally ingrained in Samoa. 

"I talk about advocacy because advocacy is telling them that you see this is happening and this is what you can do about it. It helps them to build up their resilience skills, so that only when they cannot, then they come to us," she said. 

"The psychological aspect of it that we see, it's also important. And how do we do it? When we talk about it, when you talk about the ways to deal with it at the family level, you know? It helps the patient, and then coming up to the community level, it reduces the stigma."

With the help of awareness programmes, Dr Joyce believes it will help the community understand how to deal with metal illnesses and cultural values can also be used to tackle and improve mental health. 

"It can be a model where they can go to because you see a lot of patients not being able to come out and talk about it because of that stigma."

She is hoping they can involve themselves with the court system and have different rehabilitative programmes.

"Only if it includes some of our disorders and also as an expert in terms of guiding that for alcohol or any drug you know, induced disorders that we've been seeing increasing all over the world, not just for some more, but all over the world," she said.

They were able to speak with nine of the patients at the Goshen Trust facility at Moamoa. They also did their check-ups as well.