On Wednesday the 5th of December, “A Mental Health Strategy for Malta 2020-2030” Public Consultation was issued. The aim of said strategy is to look at the 10-year period and identify plans, hopes and dreams within the sector of mental health.
The presentation of the strategy was held in the morning and after that the group of people in charge of the strategy, along with consultants from the W.H.O held feedback sessions with various groups from different sectors in the field of mental health. I myself was invited to one session by Richmond Foundation as a patient representative, to discuss the positive and negative aspects that we initially identified in the document.
Firstly, the feedback session was held on the same day, so the feedback we discussed was from our initial reaction to reading the document. The document itself is 41 pages long and includes around 75 different sub-chapters about different strategies for the different areas of mental health. There is a lot of information there, and it is pleasing to see that almost every problem related to mental health is mentioned. The other side of the coin is that, despite there being a lot on information and a lot of vague plans, there is nothing really concrete. No timelines, no outlines of projects, merely half an idea on how to tackle a situation, which might seem like a step forward, but in fact is more a plan, of a plan to step forward. It is an indication of good direction, and if implemented properly could definitely lead down a promising path, but the strategy itself, as of yet, does not hold much water.
One controversial topic that did arise during the discussion was the ‘repurposing’ of Mt. Carmel.
The strategy outlines different parts of the 150-year-old psychiatric that need to be improved, fixed or reinvented. Besides the ancient facilities, careless staff and overall lack of serving its purpose, Mt. Carmel carries a very heavy stigma with it, something that, even with an entire rebranding, refurbishment and re-staffing, would take decades to get over. We’ve seen the painfully slow-moving destigmatization of mental illness inch its way to where it is now, which is still not close to being good enough. Provided that there can be a significant replacement for the hospital, such as developing a new psychiatric hospital as part of Mater Dei, or having separate, more integrated, ‘clinics’ for medium-term patients (Since the psychiatric part of Mater Dei can only hold ¼ of the people that Mt. Carmel can), then it begs the question; is there really a need to keep Mount Carmel alive?
Regarding mental health, the alternatives all seem to have more promising results in terms of treating mental disorders and removing the stigma around mental health. So why is the strategy so dead-set on not leaving it behind?
by Matthew Paris
