Goa's 120 cured psychiatry patients have nowhere to go

Over 120 patients, despite having been cured by psychiatric treatment, are still languishing in Goa's only government-run psychiatry institute, Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar said on Friday.

It is because no relatives are coming forward to take them home even five years after recovery and they have nowhere to go, he added.

Speaking to reporters at the State Secretariat during a post cabinet meet media briefing, Parsekar said that a mechanism was being worked out to send the recovered patients to asylums, where they would be taken care of.

"It is impossible to admit new patients to the Institute of Psychiatry and Human Behaviour (IPHB). It is full because there are 120 patients who are fully treated and recovered, but no one is coming forward to claim them," the chief minister said.

Set up in 1980, the IPHB has 190 beds which, Parsekar claims, are invariably full with patients who have recovered but cannot be just disbanded.

"So we are sending the recovered patients to an asylum where they can be taken care of."

"We are also recruiting staffers, including nurses especially for taking care of the recovered patients, many of whom are elderly," Parsekar said while issuing a public appeal to the kin of recovered patients to take them back home.

"We have traced several relatives and patients and handed over some of the recovered patients to them. In the case of these 120, we could find no one," he added.