Describing the St Ann’s Psychiatric Hospital as a warehouse where families leave their mentally ill relatives, Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh says mental health care in T&T will be decentralised in 2019.
Speaking to reporters at the San Fernando General Hospital on New Year’s Day, Deyalsingh said decentralisation would include the setting up of new facilities as well as re-purposing existing facilities that are under the control of the various regional health authorities.
It means that patients will be placed in the various mental health facilities in each region where there will be easy access to them by their families.
The minister said that by returning mental health care to the community setting, patients could quickly return to their villages, families and friends while receiving mental health support. He said there is a certain percentage of patients in the St Ann’s Hospital who can function in their communities with proper medication and psychosocial support.
Sadly, he said some of these patients have spent up to 30 years in the St Ann’s Hospital, and it has become the only home they know.
“That is wrong, and we are hell-bent on starting the process of decentralisation in 2019… The policy decision which I am in charge of has been taken. It is up to the RHAs to start to execute,” Deyalsingh said.
The St Ann’s Hospital is the only major psychiatric care facility in T&T and is outfitted with 27 wards and has a bed capacity of 870, making it the largest facility by patient capacity.
Deyalsingh said that the current model of mental health care is to put mentally ill patients “in a warehouse in St Ann’s.”
He said that mental health had been one of the areas that T&T has not distinguished itself, but will change in 2019. He noted several consultations on mental health had taken place in 2016 and 2017, and the ministry has also looked into a Joint Select Committee’s report of mental health already.
“What St Ann’s has become over the years, and I make no apologies for saying this, it has become a warehouse where you simply take people with mental diseases and put them there. Their families forget them, and that is the most important part.
“The goal of the new policy moving forward is, very simply this: To decentralise mental health (care) so that St Ann’s is not the repository of people with mental health problems from Icacos, from Toco, from Cedros, from Couva and from Tobago because that is the model of mental health care we do in Trinidad and Tobago.
“That model has been discredited worldwide,” he said.