The government is making provision for the possible closure of the National Psychiatric Hospital in Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne).
Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony made the disclosure while engaging media operatives on the sidelines of an event Wednesday morning at the Pegasus Hotel, Georgetown.
He also pledged the government’s support to making provisions for patients there.
Minister Anthony also said approximately 200 persons, who have been living there for several years, can go home as they are deemed competent.
“The new model of treating psychiatric patients is really when they have an acute episode you treat them and then they go back to their home environment, and so that’s what we are trying now to adapt,” Minister Anthony explained.
The move is one of the government’s plans to provide modern services to persons of such nature.
According to Dr Anthony, no stigma should be attached to these persons as they can be treated like normal patients at any hospital nationwide.
“If there is no home for the current patients who are fairly well to go to, then, we will have to find someplace where they can go and where they can continue to live…we [will] give them some meals and other amenities that they need,” the Health Minister stated.
He said the act of institutionalising persons in need of mental care does not occur anywhere else in the world and it should not happen in Guyana either.
