World Mental Health Day After 14 years, reform bill to see light of day next month
Matthew Vella The parliamentary secretary for the elderly and community care said that he is expecting to see the long-awaited mental health bill to finally see the light of the day within the next month.
14 years since the launch of the mental health reform process, the laws regulating mental health remain those enacted in 1976, as none of the proposed laws have made it to parliament. The act has been redrafted several times over the years but it has not yet been presented to Parliament, because the bill has been “stuck” at the Attorney General’s office for the past year.
Parliamentary secretary Mario Galea has however told MaltaToday that his experts have met with the AG’s lawyers to iron out their final differences.
“There was a problem over ‘guardianship’ and its incompatibility with other definitions of guardianship in other laws. Our experts met in July to redraft their position and it seems it will only be a month until the law is issued,” Galea said.
He added that the impasse did not prevent the ministry from gradually implementing some aspects of the reform, such as the setting up of community care centres.
Despite government’s apparent commitment to mental health reform, Galea’s predecessor Louis Deguara was faced with the mass resignation of the national commission for mental health reform in 2008.
An urgent problem highlighted by the commission was the widening of the list of mental health conditions to qualify for free medication, a problem that stands to this day.
Only people who are diagnosed with schizophrenia are granted free medication, which means that people suffering from depression and other mental disorders are not getting treatment because they cannot afford medication which is very expensive.
Due to this anomaly, most of the medication given for free is being prescribed under a false diagnosis – that of schizophrenia – simply to fall under Schedule V, the list of chronic illnesses meriting free medicine.
That means people suffering from illnesses such as bipolar affective disorder or chronic depression are deliberately ‘misdiagnosed’ with schizophrenia or schizo-affective disorder, so as to be eligible for the free drugs.
“The system is wrong because everyone is virtually classified as a schizophrenic even if they have ‘mere’ chronic depression, challenging behaviour or learning disabilities,” a psychiatrist had told MaltaToday last year. “It is wrong because it’s unfair on the patients to be misdiagnosed, it’s unfair on the system itself because of the chaos it creates in treatment, and it’s unfair on all those who resist being mislabelled as schizophrenics but still require free drugs.”
This also means that the health records are largely inaccurate and are also causing chaos in treatment, the commission had maintained.
Any comments?
If you wish your comments to be published in our Letters pages please click button below. Please write a contact number and a postal address where you may be contacted.
Search:
MALTATODAY
BUSINESSTODAY
Download MaltaToday Sunday issue front page in pdf file format
All the interviews from Reporter on MaltaToday's YouTube channel.
