Gov’t making provisions for possible National Psychiatric Hospital closure

The Government is making provision for the possible closure of the National Psychiatric Hospital in Region Six.
Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony made this disclosure while engaging media operatives on the sidelines of an event on Wednesday morning at the Pegasus Hotel in Georgetown. He also pledged Government’s support in making provisions for patients there, and said that approximately 200 persons who have been living there for several years can go home, as they are deemed competent.

“The new model of treating psychiatric patients is really when they have an acute episode you treat them, and then they go back to their home environment, and so that’s what we are trying now to adapt,” Minister Anthony explained.
This move is one of the Government’s plans to provide modern services to persons of such nature. According to Dr. Anthony, no stigma should be attached to these persons, as they can be treated like normal patients at any hospital nationwide.
“If there is no home for the current patients who are fairly well to go to, then we will have to find someplace where they can go and where they can continue to live…we [will] give them some meals and other amenities that they need,” the Health Minister stated.
Dr Anthony has said the act of institutionalising persons in need of mental care does not occur anywhere else in the world, and it should not happen in Guyana either.