A police union spokesman told parliament’s Health Committee that procedures for handling mental health patients in Cyprus resemble those of past decades, or even centuries, and called for the law to be changed.
Nikos Loizidis, press spokesman for the Isotita police union, was addressing MPs during a discussion of problems in mental health services when he described officers breaking down doors, acting as makeshift psychologists for patients’ relatives, handcuffing patients and placing them in police vans and holding cells.
Officers force entry into a patient’s home under a committal order, Loizidis said, then try to calm relatives before handcuffing the patient and putting them in a van bound for hospital. There, he said, they wait in a queue, despite guidance that such patients should be seen first. If a psychiatrist determines the patient needs compulsory treatment, officers then have to go back to court.
Sometimes a judge only orders that the patient be kept somewhere safe overnight, Loizidis said. In those cases, officers take them to the police station, where they sleep in a cell or on the floor with blankets, despite already having a medical finding that they need psychiatric care. No nurse is present at any point, he said.
The next day, officers are back in court so a judge can order the patient’s transfer to the psychiatric hospital, Loizidis said. But if they arrive after 2.30pm, there’s often no doctor on duty. Officers then have to call the on-call doctor, and can’t take the patient inside until the doctor turns up.
“And half our patrol cars, I’m ashamed to say, are covered in blood from injuries to these people, who get hurt outside Athalassa Hospital,” Loizidis said. “I have police officers acting as psychiatrists, as psychologists, trying to calm them down. Then they hand them over.”
He went on to say the Psychiatric Treatment Law of 1997 effectively casts police officers as psychiatrists too. Under Article 36, he said, officers themselves must testify against a patient before a compulsory psychiatric treatment order can be issued.
Turning to MPs, Loizidis said technology could cut out that final step altogether. “We have Skype, we have Microsoft Teams,” he said. “Once there is a psychiatric finding that a person requires compulsory help, the judge should be able to see the patient via video call and ask them the questions directly.”
The Health Committee’s session continued a discussion first held at its last meeting before parliament’s summer recess.
