LAHORE, June 12: Almost 40 per cent of the psychiatric patients admitted to the Government Hospital for Psychiatric Diseases are ‘stable’ but cannot be discharged because their families have abandoned them, Dawn has learnt.
There are around 900 patients including 225 women admitted to the hospital. The hospital offers complete custodial care to the indoor patients.
Talking to Dawn, the GHPD medical superintendent, Dr Afzal Shaheen, said the hospital was forced to keep the patients which were stable and could lead a normal life by just taking prescribed medicines regularly. He said over 350 patients were stable but they were either not acceptable to their families or the addresses given to the hospital at the time of admission turned out to be wrong.
In some cases the patients sent to their homes returned to the hospital after a relapse due to certain social or medical reasons. “The families generally abandon a patient who goes home and returns a number of times with a relapse,” Dr Shaheen said.
He said the hospital sent three letters to the home addresses of the patients at one-month intervals. If it did not receive a response, he said, it sent a staff member to locate the patients’ family at the given addresses to ensure safe return of the patient.
Dr Shaheen said the hospital had shifted a woman from Gujranwala to the SOS Village in 1998 with an undertaking to treat her in case of a relapse. The women, he said, had never returned and there was no complaint.
Answering another question, he said a majority of indoor patients suffered from schizophrenia, manic depression and drug psychosis.
According to the hospital record 73,337 patients, including 36,604 new cases, were examined at its outdoor department during the last calendar year. The hospital admitted 5,665 patients and discharged 5,554 patients during the same period.
Sources said patient-care at the hospital was quite below the mark due to an acute shortage of staff — from consultants to trained ward assistants.
The hospital has one consultant out of the seven posts. Similarly, two posts of general physicians, one post each of neuro-physiologist, radiologist and additional medical superintendent are lying vacant. Some 40 posts of lower grade employees like ward servants, ayas, cooks and sanitary workers are also vacant. “Ideally a ward assistant should take care of five patients. At present, each assistant is catering to the needs of 25 patients on the average,” the medical superintendent said.
The hospital also has only one washerman to wash the patient-uniforms.
Recently, the hospital renovated its three blocks, converting cells into halls. The renovation of two more blocks is underway. Dr Shaheen said the idea was to provide better living atmosphere to patients.
However, senior consultant psychiatrist Dr Nusrat Habib Rana said keeping psychiatric patients together in one hall was wrong. “Some of these patients are highly aggressive and violent. They need to be kept in separate cells,” she said. In the present circumstances, she said, doctors had to keep them under sedatives to avoid any scuffles and brawls in the wards, even overdose them. Each block has four cells for highly aggressive patients.
Answering a question, she said mental illnesses were on the rise due to increasing social and economic problems. She said youths were also suffering depressive illnesses due to non-availability of jobs.
A 20-bed new female rehabilitation unit is being set up in the hospital to provide recreational and occupational therapy facilities.
The hospital is also operating a 25-bed unit for treatment of drug addicts. The addicts are being provided with free medicines and food.
NEW ORDINANCE: The new Presidential Order and Regulation for Mentally Disordered Persons 2001 has so far failed to make any impact on the improvement of patient-care at the psychiatric hospitals.
It is learnt that the order required the constitution of Federal Mental Health Authority at the Centre and a board of visitors at the provincial level. Both the bodies have yet to be constituted.
