Yonay Alonso, a 21-year-old from Lanzarote, denounced this Wednesday in a video published on social networks the lack of a specialized doctor in Psychiatry who is on call in the Emergency Room of the Doctor José Molina Orosa Hospital in Lanzarote during the afternoons and evenings.
"Mental health in Lanzarote is in crisis, and I experience it firsthand with my mother," this citizen begins in his publication on social networks.
According to what this young man from Conejero explained to La Voz, for five years his life has taken a turn and he has had to leave everything to take care of his mother, a psychiatric patient with a degree two of dependency.
Alonso explains that the lack of resources in public health to care for his mother means that when she goes to the Molina Orosa Hospital for a psychiatric emergency, if she arrives after 4:00 p.m. no specialist sees her until the next day. "Yesterday I took her to the Emergency Room around 4:00 p.m. and a psychiatrist didn't see her until after 1:00 p.m. this Wednesday," he says.
Yonay Alonso denounces that the time that elapses from his mother's admission to the Emergency Room and the attention by the Psychiatry specialist, his mother spends it "sedated or tied up." In addition, once the Psychiatrist sees her, in most occasions he gives her medication and "wants to send her home."
"Imagine for someone who thinks they are being chased or who hears voices and you arrive at the hospital and they sedate you or tie you up," this citizen reflects in the video.
This resident of the island states that he has had to "fight" to have his mother admitted on this occasion because she was "disoriented." In this sense, he denounces that "on many occasions" the hospital's "small" Mental Health Unit is "collapsed" and patients are admitted to wards of the Molina Orosa where there is "no television or activities." And he even indicates that "instead of improving, you feel like getting worse" because of these conditions.
