BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - The Mental Health Day Treatment Center is expected to be operationalised sometime this month, according to Health Minister Senator the Hon. Wendy Phipps.
This announcement follows a number of delays since its official opening in November 2016.
At the Prime Minister’s most-recent press conference, Phipps, in addressing a question about the delay, indicated that the Government is committed to having it open later this month.
Further, she explained that the center faced a number of challenges since the official opening ceremony, which were beyond the control of the Ministry of Health.
“We had experienced a number of challenges in terms of enhancement of the physical space, in so far as security is concerned. We did have some difficulties outside of our control, having to do with interconnectivity between the J. N. France Hospital and the Mental Health Day Treatment Center,” Phipps noted.
Located at Lime Kiln, the facility was constructed to treat patients with mental disorders on a daily basis, and would not function as a live-in center.
As the Minister explained: “The Mental Health Day Treatment Center, even though it is supposed to be directly managed by community-based health services or the public health infrastructure, is also a joint operation with institutional health services.
She added that the “current acute facility for mental illness is reposed in the J. N. France complex and would have a serious interface in terms of placement of patients at the Mental Health Day Treatment Center.”
Additionally, she noted that as part of the Pan-American Health Organisation’s (PAHO) endorsed protocol, “We must have every single user of the center assessed by the acute facility prior.”
To this end, she pointed out that it is something that her Ministry is not in a position to handle “so we are trying to sort that matter out properly, given the type of patients that we would be handling”.
