Family members who are fed up with taking care of such patients leave them behind at the hospital. Currently, there are three such patients at Nepal Mental Hospital. A female patient on Bed No. 16 said her relatives would return tomorrow. But doctors said she has been abandoned by her relatives for good. [break]
“The hospital always has such patients,” Dr Krishna Gautam, a psychiatrist at the hospital, said. “Being abandoned by the family deteriorates the mental health of the patients further,” he said.
He said schizophrenic patients are often abandoned by their kin.
Though the hospital keeps records of the permanent address and phone numbers of the relatives prior to admitting the patient, sometimes relatives give fake addresses and phone numbers to the hospital so that hospital cannot trace them.
Abandoned patients cause problems to the hospital that has limited staff.
To prevent family members from abandoning patients, the hospital has a compulsory provision that a patient must be accompanied by an attendant all the time. But such provision has not worked. Some attendants leave behind the patients and they never come back.
“It is hard to take care of someone who has mental problem but care-givers shouldn´t give up,” Dr Gautam added.
The hospital faces problems to find the exact address of schizophrenic patients as they often cannot tell their address. When the patients become totally normal, only then can they tell their address.
“After the patients become healthy, we have to send a staffer with the patient to his home,” he said. For this, the hospital has to bear travel fares and other expenditure.
Sometimes, the hospital sends patients with the relatives of other patients.
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