Up In the Air - Psychiatric Health Services

The structures most strongly affected by the economic crisis since 2008 are those of mental health care, created under the psychiatric reform program and passed under the authority of the State over the last five years.

The policies of deinstitutionalisation are in danger of being shipwrecked

The future of hundreds of patients who are accommodated in hostels or sheltered apartments, and thousands of other people, who are supported by other mental health programs, seems uncertain. Most services are functioning at below capacity due to insufficient funding. The payment of wages to employees only recently reverted to normality. The EU is threatening to cut its subsidy to Greece if the pact signed last year with the Ministry of Health to address the problems within the mental health services, is not fulfilled. The ministry has not even proceeded to the consultation with the involved parties (service providers, service users and their families etc) that had been announced.

Recently closed were two homes for adolescents, one belonging to SOS Villages and the other belonging to the association APHCA. In March APHCA applied to the Government to suspend operation of a further five units, which have been in operation for the past 17years.Three hostels designed for the deinstitutionalisation of adults (mostly from the Leros mental hospital), one protected apartment and the hostel "Melia", which houses for a few months children of parents with severe mental illness.

Four trade unions representing staff from the mental health associations (SEPSAEKO, PEPSAEE, Perivolaki, and APHCA) describe a "tragic situation" in the field, which compromise "the stability, security, continuity of therapeutic care and respect for people suffering from mental disorder”. The de-institutionalization of patients and their reintegration into society has been achieved after many years work, but this work is likely to be blown sky-high if the sheltered accommodations are closed or if the staff change. One unit leader of those which are threatened with closure explains, "Patients who have roots together in these neighborhoods will be uprooted if they go elsewhere or if they lose people who are reference points for their treatment" he says.

The worst, however, indicate the employees, is that if the existing structures within the mental health service are reduced during the current economic crisis, they will not be replaced by something else. And this will be a great loss for society, who, maybe after the injury to its pocket inflicted by the economic crisis, will perhaps also see the injury to its mental health.

Agg. B.

Article from the Greek newspaper Eleftherotypia (translated by: the iron chicken)