Mental ill-health, treatment and rehabilitation of patients

Treatment
THE treatment of mental ill-health is usually the responsibility of professional Mental Health Workers.
Treatment is provided in three different settings namely:

• Out-patient services for persons living in the community.
• Day Hospital services
•  Mental Hospital services

As treatment environments, the hospital and the wider society (community) have their advantages and disadvantages.
In the community, the preservation of normal social roles and active participation in life had to be set against possible family interference with treatment.
The family is as good as the mental hospital in encouraging dependence.
The hospital environment is socially impoverished and unstimulating thus it is unsupportive and stressful.
The natural social environment remains unstable for family attachments, interpersonal breakups, members die and new siblings emerge, expectations varies, promised supports disappear and stress invariably multiplies.
It is increasingly common and perhaps beneficial to combine the advantages of treatment in less stressful hospital situations with the maintenance of normal social roles by use of Day Hospitals.
The essential difference between a Day Hospital and a Mental Hospital is that in a Day Hospital the patients return home to sleep in their own beds after spending the working hours in the hospital whereas in a Mental Hospital the patients spend 24 hours in the hospital.
Rehabilitation
The idea of REHABILITATION is general.
It is applicable to ALL HANDICAPPED PERSONS both mentally handicapped and physically handicapped.
Unfortunately, we are very far from this ideal concept.
Whilst there are a lot of facilities in the community for rehabilitation of the physically handicapped person, rehabilitation of the mentally handicapped person is effectively provided through the National Psychosocial Rehabilitation Centre.

•  Next week’s edition – Definition of Rehabilitation