PUDUKOTTAI
The district administration has come to the aid of the wandering mentally ill persons in the district by creating an Emergency Care and Recovery Centre (ECRC) with the twin objectives of providing them medical care and psychosocial support post rescue and necessary steps to reunite them with their family.
Fully funded by the State Health Department, the ECRC has been created inside the Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddy Memorial Government Hospital premises here with a team of social workers and nurses attached to it to take care of the rescued wandering mentally ill persons.
The centre created during the lockdown period is equipped with 50 beds with a couple of psychiatrists deployed to work in shifts to provide necessary treatment and psycho-social therapy to the rescued mentally ill. General public could either alert the local police or the ECRC if they happened to notice a wandering mentally ill person in their locality.
Upon receipt of information, a team from the ECRC would immediately be sent by ‘102’ government vehicle to the field to rescue the wandering mentally ill, the District Mental Health Programme Officer R. Karthik Deivanayagam told The Hindu on Thursday. While carrying out the rescue mission, the team would take necessary safety precautions such as wearing a mask and gloves during the current COVID-19 pandemic.
“Basic screening of the rescued person would be done to ascertain if they had any external injury or sickness and taken to the nearest government hospital for medical examination. Thereafter, they would be referred to the ECRC to provide them care and psycho-social support at the centre,” Dr.Deivanayagam said. If they were sick, they would be sent to the Pudukottai Medical College Hospital for treatment. The ECRC has a team of five male and female social workers, 10 staff nurses and a couple of psychiatrists.
The rescued person would at first be given a bath, a hair cut if required, food and clothes to attend to their basic needs. Thereafter, detailed clinical screening and psychiatrist assessment would be done for providing treatment, Dr. Deivanayagam said adding that they would also be subjected to COVID-19 test simultaneously.
They would be provided with psycho-social therapy and arrangements would be made to get them a disability certificate to avail benefits provided by the State government. The social workers would interact with the rescued person and ascertain information about their family members in an effort to reunite them. The mentally ill persons would be accommodated at the ECRC until they were reunited with their family, Dr. Deivanayagam said.
Arrangements would also be made to impart them training in some vocational trades for their long-term rehabilitation, he further said. The rescue operation and reunion would be carried out in coordination with the police and revenue officials and the Department of Differently Abled Persons. The ECRC has been taking care of five rescued wandering mentally ill persons till now. One rescued person has been reunited with the family, he said.
