The New Canaries-Canary Islands Bloc candidate for Lanzarote and La Graciosa to the Canary Islands Parliament, Yoné Caraballo, proposed this Wednesday to create a "Subunit" of Psychiatry in the Emergency Room of the Doctor José Molina Orosa Hospital.
During his appearance at the new headquarters of the Canaristas in San Bartolomé, Caraballo explained that the idea is to take this initiative for approval to the Canary Islands Parliament after the next elections on May 28.
According to him, the latest figures on mental health in Lanzarote and throughout the Canary Islands "justify the initiative", with an incidence that has been accentuated by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
“The uncertainty, the economic crisis, unemployment, ERTEs, unwanted loneliness, those already known as latchkey children, confinements and grief over deaths and other pathologies are triggering - and will continue to do so - mental health disorders,” said the Canarista candidate.
“However, and despite the exponential increase, the Psychiatry services do not have a special action project for the Emergency Service. A project that would achieve a lower workload in the hospital Emergency Service and among its professionals, and that would provide an improvement in the quality of care and specialized attention for patients with mental health problems who come to the service in an emergency,” argued Caraballo. “
We need progress in mental health, because in the Canary Islands we have gone in a few years from 17% to 43% of the population taking anxiolytics. Psychiatric disorders that require specialized care are the new silent pandemic that has taken hold in our society,” Caraballo added. “That is why we also proposed more than a year ago a psychiatry unit at the Molina Orosa Hospital, but then they called us populists,” he lamented.
Psychiatry Subunit in Emergency Services
In the words of the candidate for Parliament, “what we propose is to be able to physically have a specialist medical consultation present 24 hours a day in the Emergency area”. “We ask that the psychiatrist not only provide care in the Emergency Room from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., but 24 hours a day. In order not to cut back on the number of general emergency medical consultations, the possibility of dividing the internal patient waiting room and creating a seventh consultation room for the specialist in psychiatry could be studied,” he maintains.
In addition, “it would have an independent waiting room similar to the pediatric waiting room, safeguarding the privacy of those patients who require psychiatric or psychological care in the consultation area”.
To guarantee the “specialized and comprehensive care” of the user independently in the Emergency Room, the proposal would require several health professionals and hourly shifts: a nurse for each 12-hour shift; an auxiliary nursing care technician for each 12-hour shift; an auxiliary nursing care technician also from the Psychiatry Unit staff; an orderly per 12-hour shift; and a specialist in Psychiatry on 24-hour shifts with a physical presence in the emergency unit.
Emotional chat
But perhaps one of the chapters that has most alarmed society has been the impact of the pandemic on the mental health of young people and the high rate of suicides recorded in Lanzarote, 25 according to the Lanzarote Data Center during 2021. In this sense, the Lanzarote candidate also stated that Parliament approved in November 2022, at the request of Caraballo himself and the Canaristas, the proposal for the 'emotional chat', consisting of a psychologist or a nurse specialized in mental health attending through instant messaging such as WhatsApp to minors with deficiencies or psychological problems. “The problem is that, although we were able to take the proposal and approve it in Parliament through the NC deputies from Gran Canaria, the project has been kept in a drawer and the first thing I will do if I get to Parliament will be to recover this initiative and make it a reality,” Caraballo asserted.
Action plan in Primary Care, psychologists in health centers
In addition, the candidate for Parliament also asks that the main health centers in Lanzarote have a psychology consultation. Yoné Caraballo defends that “the request for a prior appointment is viable through the SCS prior appointment APP or by calling 012”.
“We have to act now. These mental health problems are not something anecdotal or temporary, but will increase. That is why our institutions and our managers must anticipate and reinforce prevention. Profitability criteria are not valid here. The mind, although not seen, also hurts,” Caraballo adds.