Athalassa hosts ‘people who should not be in psychiatric hospitals’

People who “should not be hospitalised in psychiatric hospitals” are currently inpatients at the Athalassa psychiatric hospital, House health committee chairwoman Savia Orphanidou said on Thursday. Addressing the day’s committee session, she decried a “lack of protocols” as well as an “absence of adequate community structures”, which she said leads to people being hospitalised who under ordinary circumstances would not be. Those people, she said, include “children and adults with autism, people with eating disorders, and the homeless”. As such, she called for a “different structure” for “the treatment of these individuals” both inside and outside the hospital, as well as “the development of structures in the community”.

In line with this, she said that existing legislation should be “amended”, and added to this end that she expects “changes to the legislation on hospitalisation decrees and psychiatric hospitalisation, as well as on community care and the creation of relevant structures, by the end of the year”. She also spoke of the “stigma faced by people who leave psychiatric hospitals”, while also making reference to the issue of support for the families of those impacted by mental illness and efforts to prevent it To this end, she called for psychologists to be “present in schools”, and for the creation of a “national 24-hour hotline” for people suffering from mental illnesses. She said that she had been informed by the government that such a national hotline could be implemented as early as the first quarter of next year. File photo: The Athalassa unit Akel MP calls for more staff to be hired at Athalassa Akel MP Marina Nikolaou, meanwhile, decried a “prolonged situation of underfunding, understaffing, overloading, and abandonment of mental health services”. She…