Another week and another psychiatric hospital closes its doors. This time it is Sydney’s Callan Park hospital in Rozelle, where the services at the beautiful harbourside location have been shoehorned into a nearby general hospital. And of course in the move the number of beds has dwindled, resulting in the largest psychiatric facility in the city now being run by … wait for it … one of the state’s prisons.
That seems to be the deal for mental health patients – your clinic gets closed and replaced by a website. If that doesn’t work, Go to Jail, Do Not Go Past Go and it’s the developers and management consultants who collect the $200.
I really don’t get it. What is it about mental health and psychiatry that has managers and bureaucrats waging a relentless campaign to close down institutions that care for patients?
Yes I know it was all supposed to be about “Care in the Community” but I don’t understand why we haven’t seen a similar move to close educational and political institutions and move the students and politicians into the community.
No doubt it is quite expensive to maintain these bricks and mortar facilities for psychiatric patients, but is it really too much to run residential facilities for the most vulnerable in our society? Especially with a $21 billion budget surplus? In the last 40 years the decline in beds for psychiatric patients has occurred in parallel with a steady rise in the number of beds for backpackers. The YHA seems to have no problem in building and maintaining large, affordable and well appointed hostels in the centre of our cities, not to mention all the other hostels. Doesn’t seem to be a lot of rocket science involved.
Perhaps we should just buy psychiatric patients a YHA card as an alternative to the isolation and neglect they face in the community. Because with the closure of psychiatric facilities like our prisons have become the de facto residential care facilities for patients with serious psychioatric and drug and alcohol problems.
Another week and another psychiatric hospital closes its doors. This time it is Sydney’s Callan Park hospital in Rozelle, where the services at the beautiful harbourside location have been shoehorned into a nearby general hospital. And of course in the move the number of beds has dwindled, resulting in the largest psychiatric facility in the city now being run by … wait for it … one of the state’s prisons.
