Brazil: Rio de Janeiro closes the last of its in-patient psychiatric hospitals

Rio de Janeiro closed the last department of the now defunct psychiatric complex this Thursday. Giuliano Moreirathe last shelter that worked in the second largest Brazilian city and which even more than 5 thousand interns.

The closure was facilitated by the mayor’s office of the most emblematic city Brazil as part of the process of “deinstitutionalization” of psychiatric patients who were sent to the residences of their relatives, who began to receive maintenance subsidies, to small shelters and therapy, or were encouraged to live alone.

Against the imprisonment of psychiatric patients

closure Franco Da Rochaas the last remaining unit in service Giuliano Moreirawhich was one of the largest psychiatric hospitals in Brazil, represents a milestone in the anti-asylum campaign in the country, a product of a movement that emerged in the 1970s to reform and humanize psychiatric treatment.

The then Colonia Juliano Moreira, located in Jacarepagua, a remote area in the west of Rio de Janeiro, at its peak had 5,300 patients spread across 79 hospitals, departments and pavilions.

Mental hospital owned by the federal government Brazil and received patients from all over the country until it was transferred to the city administration in 1996.

After the decision not to accept new patients, the internees began to be assigned to their relatives’ residences or so-called therapeutic residences, the city health secretary explained in a statement.

Of the patients living at the shelter when the decision was made to close it, 567 were assigned to 97 therapeutic residences.

“These are people who have lived 40 or even 50 years in hospitals. Now we have managed to step over this page and start building Rio de Janeiro without shelters in the 21st century,” said the Superintendent of Psychiatric Services of the Ministry of Health. , Hugo Fagundes.

Both at the place of residence and in therapeutic departments or in their own homes – those who can live alone – discharged patients continue to be treated by specialists from the municipal psychosocial center, but already at home.

According to the specialist, the closure of the city’s last hospital “completes an important cycle in the history of psychiatric reform in Rio de Janeiropossible only after building a health system that can offer people a better quality of life and reintegration into social life.”

Closure of the psychiatric complex Giuliano Moreira This came a year after the closure of the Nisé da Silveira Institute, another well-known orphanage in the city that began to develop more humane treatments for patients with mental problems.

(As reported by EFE)