MPs on the parliamentary Health Committee heard that communities are resisting new mental health facilities, that confusion remains over which state agency is responsible for them, and that autistic patients are being inappropriately hospitalised at Athalassa Hospital.
Marios Charalambides, Commissioner for the Protection of Patients’ Rights, called the issue extremely complex, saying rising hospitalisation and readmission rates point to the need for more community-based facilities.
He said residents often resist whenever authorities try to open such facilities in their areas. “I’m ashamed that they don’t want them in their communities,” he said, asking who ultimately takes responsibility for setting up and running a facility when the local community objects.
He cited a case in which a facility had already been built, but officials later said they wanted to move its residents out. He asked whether such people would now simply be shuffled from community to community.
Charalambides called for clarity on who takes responsibility in such cases, and how duties are divided between the State Health Services Organisation (SHSO), local authorities and the Deputy Ministry of Social Welfare. He said it was easy to talk about these people’s dignity. But he asked how someone feels on being told they are unwanted, when the communities being asked to host them are the very ones they belong to.
Deputy Ministry: ‘People must feel at home’
A representative of the Deputy Ministry of Social Welfare acknowledged that deinstitutionalisation policy also falls under the ministry. She said small residences are already operating, housing people who can be effectively supported in the community, including people with autism, intellectual disabilities or mental disorders. “People must feel that they live in their own home,” she said.
She said the ministry shares responsibility for supporting people with mental disorders, and that social care and mental health services need to be planned together, not separately.
Seven autistic patients at Athalassa, two of them minors
Themida Anthopoulou, president of the Cyprus Confederation of Organisations of the Disabled, was especially forceful, saying that care for people with autism still lacks any real planning. She said seven people with autism are currently hospitalised at Athalassa Hospital, two of them minors.
Anthopoulou described meeting a child who was severely distressed by the hospital’s noise and lighting, holding his ears and keeping a blanket over his head because the lights were bothering him. “He was holding his ears and had a blanket over his head,” she said.
