HEALTH-ARGENTINA: Fighting Mental Illness with Companionship

[nosmokes]

It's a novel approach and it has the advantage of tackling a couple of problems at the same time. I caould see where a variation of this could work in some communities here. It certainly couldn't be any worse than what we're doing now which in far too many cases is simply nothing.

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original-ipsnews

HEALTH-ARGENTINA: Fighting Mental Illness with Companionship

By Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 4 (IPS) - An innovative mental health plan developed in a town in the Argentine province of La Pampa has reduced to a minimum relapses among patients discharged from hospital, while at the same time providing new and valued employment for jobless people living on state subsidies.

The Mental Health Home Companionship Programme began 14 years ago as an initiative of the professional team serving acute psychiatric patients at the Gobernador Centeno Hospital in General Pico, a town of 60,000 in the north of La Pampa, 600 kilometres northwest of Buenos Aires.

"We had 16 beds, for acute psychiatric patients only, within the general hospital," social worker Cristina Proia told IPS.

"We saw that they were staying in hospital for three or four months, which is a long time for an acute patient, and after they were discharged they would relapse," she said.

So an alternative way to support patients in the community and prevent new admissions was devised. The team of health professionals interviewed about 25 unemployed people who were receiving a government subsidy, and selected eight who were given training to provide companionship to discharged patients.

"We try to work with the patient’s healthy side. It’s not useful for us to know about his or her diagnosis or about the medication. We just provide companionship," Gladys Mamani, a woman who was unemployed and joined the programme 11 years ago, and whose experience now qualifies her to work in public and private healthcare, told IPS.

Proia, who works alongside psychologist Ana Viglianco and other professionals, says that over 100 patients have used the programme in the past 14 years. Among them were people suffering from different forms of psychosis or depression, and people at psychosocial risk such as low-income teenage mothers.

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