New Unit at St Giles
The St Giles Psychiatric Hospital will be opening its new Alcohol and Other Drugs (AOD ) Unit next month.
This was revealed by the hospital’s Team Leader Training Unit, Taniela Rasavuka during the mSafe 2nd Multidisciplinary Conference at the University of the South Pacific yesterday. Mr Rasavuka said the unit would employ a nurse and a counsellor who were going to look at those who were coming in with substance abuse and dependence issues.
This included the use of methamphetamine, glue sniffing and marijuana use. Mr Rasavuka added the biggest challenge for them was that they did not have rehabilitation centres at the moment.
He added for people who came in with drug abuse issues, upon discharge they had to go back to the same environment.
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We need to have a change in mindset and start looking at drug addiction as a mental health problem says Ellana Kalounisiga of the Ministry of Mums.
Ms Kalounisiga spoke during the 2nd mSafe Multi-disciplinary Conference at the University of the South Pacific’s ICT Center yesterday.
The Ministry of Mums (MOM) is a newly formed group comprising concerned mums who raise awareness on methamphetamine and its infiltration in Fiji.
“We are sitting on the brink of an unprecedented disaster and this disaster will be irreversible,” Ms Kalounisiga said on the issue of hard drugs in Fiji. “We can put drug dealers in prison but we also need to change our minds and conscience about the addicts. “We need to look at it as a health issue.
“These addicts are not criminals, they actually suffer a mental health illness which is addiction.”
She said there was a need to help addicts but unfortunately Fiji did not have rehabilitation facilities for them. “There is nowhere for the addicts to go to for help, “she said.
“It is incredibly important that groups of the community come together and start talking about why, how and where we can build a rehabilitation facility.”
She said they were planning to build Fiji’s first youth dropin centre and were currently working to procure funding for it.
“We want to have an open space which will be manned by mums,” Ms Kalounisiga said. “It will be an open space and we want to have music, art and dance programmes for kids.” So far MOM has visited about 27 schools and spoken to kids on hard drugs especially methamphetamine.
“Telling kids to not take drugs, won’t work because kids probably won’t listen, “she said. “What we need to do is arm them with information so that when they are faced with a choice, they will have the necessary information to make a sensible choice.”
Ms Kalounisiga added any interested parents can contact her through Facebook and the MOM page will also be set up by next week so people will be able to use that platform to reach out to them.Edited