Mental health care has been one of the biggest unmet needs, with mental illness striking in a progressive speed without regard for economic class. Unfortunately, it’s always the people with low income who are acutely-affected.
Our peace-loving City of Gentle People is baffled by the seemingly-unattended mental health issues that are piling up. Letting these issues left unabated will put a drag on our local economy.
Witnessing the sorry state of the patients, employees, and facilities at the Negros Oriental Provincial Hospital Psychiatric Extension in Bgy. Talay, popularly known as the Talay Mental & Rehabilitation Center, I cannot help but ask “Is mental health care neglected by government?”
If you go and visit the center, you will find that such facility needs to be rehabilitated and improved in all aspects. It has been overcrowded for the past years with a growing number of admitted patients from all over the Province and nearby Mindanao, Cebu, Siquijor, Negros Occidental.
The in-patients now have reached from 70 a day in 2015, to a maximum of 90 a day this 2016, quite high compared to the total isolation cells capacity which is only 30.
Out-patient who come for regular treatment is in the minimum of 50 patients a day.
The fact remains that there is an overflow of admitted patients in the center, and the mushrooming of mentally-ill persons roaming around Dumaguete.
Their wandering behavior in the City is a threat to public safety and security. Task Force Special Action Group Advocating for Rapid Reforms brings to the rehab center an average per week of three persons with mental disorders, who were found roaming around the City.
Out-patients are too many in a daily basis. The number of isolation cells is insufficient (20 cells for the charity ward, and 10 cells for the paid wards).
Several patients are overstaying in the paid ward. Actually, they had long been discharged but their families just preferred to pay P3,000 a month for their patient to just stay put in rehab.
Some of the patients with violent tendencies are placed in the “Common Ward” that eventually may give them chances to escape.
Moreover, the possibility of an escape of patients with violent behaviors is eminent due to the insufficient number of security guards.
The P200,000 assistance extended by the City government is not even enough to shoulder the meals of the patients for the whole year.
The existing budget for food for the 90 admitted patients is only P1,800 a day or P657,000 a year. This is only P6.66 per meal for each patient.
Aside from the desperately- limited budget for food, and the intensely-insufficient number of isolation cells, there has been an achingly lack of personnel such as doctors, nurses, security guards, and medicines.
After the psychiatrist resigned, the patients were deprived of such crucial service for about three months.
So you can just imagine the kind of medicines the patients were receiving from the medical personnel who were left behind.
There was also a report of the alleged selling of medicines by an employee in the center to facilitate the medications of the patients; the practice has been already been stopped.
This explains why we really need to have a pharmacy and a pharmacist inside the Talay Mental Center.
Thanks to the Province for hiring a replacement psychiatrist in the person of Dr. Glenda Basubas, and thanks to her as well for gladly accepting to serve the facility and the people of the province of Negros Oriental.
We need more of Dr. Basubas and her expertise, as she only gets to serve the patients once a week. We need a 24-7 psychiatrist.
We need a nurse on-duty in each of the three shifts because; for at about eight years now, there’s no 11pm to 7am shift due to security problems. Nurses have expressed fear commuting to Bgy. Talay to work on the graveyard shift. Perhaps a government vehicle can be assigned to transport nurses on duty?
We also need to add more nurses on board as currently, there are onlythree nurses, all paid by the Dumaguete government.
Furthermore, a 24-7 security service is badly-needed.
A better coverage of prescription drugs, a commitment to improve the facilities by adding more cells to match the increasing number of in-patients, an increase in the budget for food, an increase in the number of medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, and security guards, and a vehicle dedicated for the use by the professional workers in the center.
I believe the prevailing issues in the mental health care center in Bgy. Talay can be properly and promptly acted upon as soon as the Board of Management is restored and reactivated.
We need the newly-elected and re-elected government officials to pursue mental health reform to address the growing mental health issues.
______________________________
Author’s email: wea_129@yahoo.com
