Patients must be safe in a hospital

WE are a crime-ridden society and this city is used to ugly headlines. However, the news of a mental patient beaten to a pulp, allegedly by staff, at Elizabeth Donkin Hospital was a shocker.

Are staff not screened if they are to work with mentally ill patients?

This is an extremely vulnerable group, and in many cases these individuals due to the nature of their illness are simply unable to look after themselves.

They are placed in specialist centres like Elizabeth Donkin Hospital precisely because they need special care.

How shocking therefore to be denied this protection.

We have long had horror stories of attacks in state hospitals – three psychiatric patients died at Livingstone Hospital at the end of last year – but Elizabeth Donkin Hospital is a psychiatric institution and as such we would have expected more stringent security.

What is frightening is that even though there was a security guard on duty he seems to have been powerless to stop the assault.

A mental hospital is a place where health and wellness should be a priority. Safety should be a given. And it is not enough to only have an internal inquiry because this is a criminal matter and we sincerely hope charges have been laid against the relevant parties.

We also hope the disciplinary hearing on the cleaners’ alleged actions is fast-tracked, particularly as it appears there were witnesses to the shameful assault.

This incident highlights the dearth of services for our mentally ill.

No less than the South African Society of Psychiatrists president says provincial health facilities are in an “appalling situation”, singling out the Eastern Cape (and Limpopo) as suffering the most.

Furthermore, no province has an organised community-based psychiatric service, as was shown by the Life Esidimeni healthcare centre debacle in Gauteng.

In that cost-cutting tragedy, more than 100 mentally ill patients died after they were released into NGOs in the community.

They, however, unlike the patient at Elizabeth Donkin Hospital, had at least been relatively safe in the mental care institutions.