Mount Carmel to close down over four years
Some 100 patients will be relocated from Mount Carmel to other psychiatric homes and services in the community within the next few weeks, Health Minister Jo Etienne Abela said yesterday.
The move is the first in a three-part plan to phase out and close down Mount Carmel as a mental health hospital within the next four years, in what is expected to be one of the boldest and most significant moves in Malta’s modern healthcare.
He said the 19th-century building was not fit for purpose and that every government in history has some blame to shoulder for not investing in the mental health infrastructure, which has led to the current reality.
He said that a committee of experts had recommended that mental health services should be provided in the same place where physical health services were provided.
The often-controversial hospital periodically makes headlines for housing patients in rundown wards. The hospital is currently home to around 230 patients.
The first group to move within the next weeks will be people with the mildest and most stable conditions.
They will be relocated to other government-run psychiatric services in the community or homes that are licensed for psychiatric use and run by other mental health NGOs.
By the end of this year, the government plans to activate phase two of the plan, when it reopens Mater Dei’s psychiatric unit, which was closed during the pandemic and transformed into a ward for COVID patients. That ward will host a further 30 patients from Mount Carmel.
The third and final phase is also the biggest project in modern mental healthcare ‒ the construction of a new acute psychiatric unit within Mater Dei, which the minister plans to open within four years, subject to planning permits and building timelines.
Plans are already in hand for the unit that would eventually cater for another 128 clients and will be built with the funds previously earmarked for a new, acute psychiatric hospital close to Mater
Dei. Those plans were scrapped weeks after Abela took office earlier this year.
In less than six months since he took over the health ministry, Abela completely turned the country’s mental health strategy around.
In March he scrapped plans for the long-promised new mental health hospital, and then again last week he announced he would close down the long-stigmatised Attard hospital.
“Psychiatric care and physical care are already integrated in this way in Gozo, and it’s a model that works really well,” he said.
Thanks to several government initiatives, the number of patients at Mount Carmel has decreased from 700 to around 230 in the last decade, he added.
The government also plans to transform Mount Carmel into a facility that
serves other medical purposes, unrelated to mental health.
Meanwhile, the relocation of social cases and prisoners (forensic cases) at Mount Carmel is yet to be discussed between Abela and the home affairs and social policy ministers.
Abela also stressed that staff at Mount Carmel will be moving with the clients and there will be no changes to their salaries or working conditions.
In a statement, the Nationalist Party said mental health care was not truly a priority to the government.
The PN said that despite its weekslong call for “an urgent dialogue” on mental health in the context of the latest number of suicides, the government has not kicked off a discussion on the matter yet.
New acute psychiatric unit within Mater Dei