Melis­sa Doughty

St Ann's Men­tal In­sti­tute should not be closed down or sold. This was the view of Sec­re­tary of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Psy­chi­a­trists of T&T Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh, who is call­ing for the in­sti­tu­tion to be com­plete­ly re­fur­bished.Two years ago, Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan had said that St Ann's should be sold since it would cost too much to re­fur­bish. He had al­so said then, that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 65 per cent of in-pa­tients at the hos­pi­tal were not sup­posed to be there.

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, Deyals­ingh said the fa­cil­i­ty needs to re­main open as T&T would ex­pe­ri­ence a mas­sive in­crease in men­tal health con­di­tions with­in the next few years.The World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO), he said, had pro­ject­ed a mas­sive in­crease in de­pres­sion by 2020, as well as T&T's in­creased age­ing pop­u­la­tion would see a rise in con­di­tions such as de­men­tia, among oth­ers.

Deyals­ingh said there was al­so an in­crease in drug-in­duced psy­chosis among the youths of T&T. He said prop­er men­tal health pro­vi­sions and mech­a­nisms should be put in place.He said the State's in­abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly fight the drug prob­lem in the coun­try placed an ad­di­tion­al strain on men­tal health per­son­nel.More so­cial work­ers, Deyals­ingh said, were need­ed to "go in­to every home and every com­mu­ni­ty, go in every nook and cran­ny to deal with some of these mat­ters."

He said while more men­tal health of­fi­cers were need­ed in the sys­tem, there were those who had com­plet­ed the re­quired pro­gramme of study two years ago but were still await­ing ap­proval to be­gin work.Deyals­ingh al­so said some men­tal health work­ers need­ed to take pride in their work and adopt a new work eth­ic.

Deyals­ingh al­so called for the set­ting up and im­ple­men­ta­tion of a Pa­tients Com­plaint Au­thor­i­ty, through which com­plaints made against staff and oth­er mem­bers of the coun­try's health in­sti­tu­tions could be ad­dressed.

He lament­ed that many times pol­i­tics got in the way of re­al so­lu­tions that could ad­dress some of the prob­lems faced by the so­cial­ly dis­placed and men­tal­ly ill in T&T. He re­called a meet­ing held with for­mer min­is­ter of the Peo­ple Dr Glenn Ra­madars­ingh and for­mer Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing in which sug­ges­tions were made to ad­dress the is­sue of street dwelling in the coun­try's cap­i­tal.

Khan: New bill be­ing draftedDeyals­ingh said the sug­ges­tions were not adopt­ed, how­ev­er, be­cause they were of­fered by Lee Sing who sat on the op­po­site side of the po­lit­i­cal fence.

Deyals­ingh said the true test of whether a Gov­ern­ment had per­formed could be mea­sured by how it treat­ed its most vul­ner­a­ble such as the so­cial­ly dis­placed and men­tal­ly ill mem­bers of so­ci­ety.He said the Psy­chi­atric As­so­ci­a­tion was will­ing to meet with Min­is­ter Vas­ant Barath, who was ap­point­ed in Ju­ly as the head of a com­mit­tee to ad­dress the prob­lems plagu­ing the health sec­tor, to dis­cuss men­tal health and oth­er is­sues af­fect­ing the coun­try.

Khan: New bill be­ing draft­ed

Mean­while, Khan de­scribed St Ann's as a "Gov­ern­ment sub­sidised mas­sive old folks home."He said, "At St Ann's, 60 to 80 per cent of peo­ple don't need to be there. Peo­ple are liv­ing at St Ann's. It has be­come an old folks home."Khan said he was think­ing of open­ing wards and clin­ics at var­i­ous health in­sti­tu­tions through­out the coun­try but need­ed the med­ical per­son­nel to do so.

The Health Min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed that as the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship's term in of­fice comes to a close, men­tal health has been put on the front burn­er. Khan's in­ten­tion, he said, was to in­tro­duce a new men­tal health bill. He said the bill was in the process of be­ing draft­ed, but he stressed that it was im­por­tant for peo­ple to start tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for what had been hap­pen­ing at the in­sti­tu­tion.

Asked about re­ports re­ceived by the Sun­day Guardian of an in­ad­e­quate sup­ply of med­ica­tion for pa­tients and the lack of an ad­e­quate wa­ter sup­ply to meet the in­sti­tu­tion's de­mands, Khan said such prob­lems were un­avoid­able since there was a larg­er vol­ume of pa­tients at the in­sti­tu­tion.