The Sunday Times MediScene

Admissions to the Angoda Mental Hospital have been smoothened by the opening of a brand new five-bed ICU

These men and women are brought in against their will and taken kicking and screaming to the wards, sometimes dragged by their hair or the scruff of their neck, in a most inhuman manner.

This is how mentally "disturbed" patients have been admitted to the Angoda Mental Hospital now known as the Institute of Psychiatry throughout the years, stripping them of any vestige of dignity all human beings, ill or not, deserve.

However, a month ago, on August 15, that changed, with admissions to this hospital being smoothened by the opening of a brand new five-bed Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

Since then 231 mentally ill patients have passed through the ICU into the relevant wards for treatment.

Commending the hospital's Director Dr. Jayan Mendis for bringing in the ICU concept to Angoda and revolutionizing mental care here, Acting Director Harischandra Gambheera says this is the only hospital to which "involuntary" admission of mentally ill patients can take place.

Under the archaic Mental Health Act which is 137 years old, relatives cannot admit any "highly disturbed" patient against their will to any other hospital, says Dr. Gambheera who is in charge of Angoda in the absence of its Director.

Explaining that when patients are brought in to the Outpatients Department against their will and have to be admitted there is much resistance, he says with the fully-equipped ICU in place, the patients are sedated, depending on their aggression, kept for 12 hours under constant monitoring and then sent to the wards when calmer.

Otherwise there is a battle between the hospital staff and the patient while the concerned relatives look on. This obviously jeopardizes the image of the hospital and people point fingers at the way the mentally ill are being treated. When they are thus dragged to the wards which are far away from the OPD, the "settled" patients already in the ward too become "unsettled", says the Acting Director adding that the ICU just next to the OPD has helped to make admissions easier and smoother.

This has helped mitigate the humiliating treatment and also preserve the rights and dignity of the mentally ill, he stresses.

The 1,200-bed Angoda Hospital established way back in 1926 has a general adult psychiatry unit, psycho-geriatric unit (for those above 65) and a forensic psychiatry unit (for alleged offenders and even sentenced offenders). MediScene learns that two more units for children & adolescents and mothers and babies are on the drawing boards.

According to Dr. Gambheera the training room for mental health personnel had been relocated to another area in the hospital and the ICU in lovely shades of peach with pinkish-reddish (salsa) screens installed there. The equipment for the ICU has been donated by the Sri Lanka-Australia-New Zealand Association through the Australian High Commission.