Supporting mental illness

23/10/2010

Everyone goes through happy, sad and angry times in their life. However, if a person is sad for more than two weeks and it starts to impact on their daily activities, including sleep patterns or affects their relationships it is important to check with a doctor.

The St. Giles Hospital in Suva has 93 patients with some having acute and others chronic illness.

During World Mental Health Day celebrations at St. Giles Hospital,  Sister Loata Vosaniyavu said the open day was to educate members of the public on how to treat a mentally ill person and to learn more about the illnesses.

“We have patients who are mentally handicapped or retarded and we have to take full care of them such as bathing, feeding and clothing. The acute patients are the ones who are out and in of the hospital ,the chronic patients are the ones staying here for more than three months,” Sr Vosaniyavu said.

“We have two wards, one is for the male patients and one for female. Because of limited resources they are not able to separate the patients according to their illness range.

“Sixty patients can be catered for in the men’s ward and for females we cater for 58. Another ward caters 18 patients who have gone through treatment and are about to be discharged.

“We do shift works seven days with a qualified doctor, consultant and a weekend supervisor. The number of staff depends on the number of patients but we have seven staff members with two registered nurses.

“Some patients come under the ‘Presidents Order’. They are persons who committed serious crimes and have been sentenced to life imprisonment.”

At the moment there are three female and four males with such cases.

The St. Giles Hospital has a community nursing programme where psychiatrists go out in the communities and visit patients. It also has a occupational therapist programme where patients when treated and about to leave the hospital are taught about their illness, signs and sickness, type of medications taken and art and craft.

“We come  as general nurses and specialise into nursing-care where we get on-job training. In terms of raising awareness we go out to the community and teach them about the illness.  Sometimes we get violent patients and aggressive ones who come back from home after sometime,” Sr Vosaniyavu said.

“Social stigma is one of the causes of people not being accepted back to society with no support from relatives.”
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Sister Loata Vosaniyavu