A new Mental Health Act comes into effect this Sunday that removes automatic hospitalization extensions for innocents and allows involuntary treatment, already allowing the release of 46 innocents, provided the courts authorize it.
The law was adopted on July 10 by the President of the Republic, who pointed to the “insufficient compaction of some legal concepts and figures.”
The new legislation is intended to change the paradigm of how people need mental health care, and specifies that after serving their sentence for the crime for which they were convicted, those who are not responsible must be released.
In the field of health, according to the government, “involuntary hospitalization in the new law gives way to compulsory treatment, preferably on an outpatient basis and only in exceptional cases by hospitalization.”
“The subordination of citizens suffering from mental illness to compulsory treatment can be determined in case of refusal of treatment prescribed by a doctor and only in situations that pose a danger to themselves or to third parties, with the provision of an assumption about the participation and decision of a citizen in the development of their treatment plan”, he adds.
The new law creates a “trustee” figure that people in need of mental health care can now choose to support their care journey and to whom they can communicate advance directives regarding their treatment.
Entry into force will mean the release of 46 insane persons distributed across the continent and the autonomous region of Madeira, but the end of these internees depends on court decisions, the Directorate-General for Reintegration and Prison Services (DGRSP) explained. to Luce.
These releases will have related responses that may include family reintegration and installation in residential structures for the elderly or people with disabilities.
Responses are also considered to be various typologies of responses to housing, placements in health care facilities, or units of an integrated mental health continuum.
According to the DGRSP, 228 people are held in prison psychiatric institutions (Sao João de Deus Hospital Prison in Caxias and the Psychiatry and Mental Health Clinic at the Santa Cruz do Bispo Prison – men). In other non-prison psychiatric institutions, there are 194 people who are not responsible for compliance with the preventive measure in the form of placement in custody.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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