Latest update March 20th, 2025 5:10 AM
Latest News
- Guyana’s oil growth boosting regional economies– CDB Director of Economics
- Suspected outbreak of Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease in Region Four
- Israel launches first ground offensive since Gaza ceasefire collapse
- Sod turned for $665M expansion of St. Stanislaus College
- Pensioner jailed for raping child
Government to shut down Berbice psychiatric facility to shelter patients in half way houses
Kaieteur News – Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony has announced that Psychiatric Hospital, Berbice would be closed eventually and provision made to accommodate mentally-ill patients at new alternative facilities.
“Over time, the current facilities that we have in New Amsterdam, we’ll be closing those facilities,” Dr. Anthony told the opening of a Neonatal conference over the weekend. In his address, the minister pointed out that the new Mental Health Protection and Promotion law caters for those modern services and specifically states that persons with mental illnesses should not be segregated from society.
According to Article 16(1) of the law, a person with illness shall have the right to live in, be part of, and not be segregated from the community. Further, it states that a person with mental illness shall “not continue to remain in a mental health facility merely because the person does not have a family or is not accepted by his or her family or is homeless.”
Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony
As such, Dr. Anthony said the public health sector would no longer be keeping psychiatric patients for extended periods but would treat and discharge them when they recover from serious episodes. “The new way of treating psychiatric patients is when they have an acute episode, you treat and when that episode is over, you can go home,” he said. He said the new New Amsterdam Hospital would include 120 beds for acutely ill psychiatric patients. Adding that the government would provide a half-way home “for those patients who don’t have anywhere to go.”
Similar Articles
THE BLUNT OF THE DAY
Sports
Features/Columnists
No immigrant should feel safe in America today
Peeping Tom… Kaieteur News- There was a time when an illegal immigrant in America could live in the shadows with some... more
If Guyana’s President Ali is the “Zelensky of the Caribbean”, who is the Putin?
Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador to the US and the OAS, Ronald Sanders By Sir Ronald Sanders Kaieteur News- In the latest... more
Weekend Cartoon
