News

Greece: BBC Reports on Mental Health Institutions

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Twenty years after a scandal erupted over the appalling conditions in which psychiatric patients were kept in Greece, the BBC has seen evidence that in some parts of the system little has changed.

The European Commission has warned Greece that if it does not come up with roadmap for psychiatric reform by next month, EU funding will be cut from social projects across the board.

As I approach the women's clinic at the Dromokraitio Psychiatric Hospital in Athens I assume it is a disused building, with its crumbling walls and broken shutters hanging from windows.

But inside I see patients in bare rooms, lying in their beds staring into space, as the minutes tick by.

Dromokraitio is home to around 300 patients, and is one of the two main psychiatric hospitals in Athens.

"If I had a dirty room in my house I might want to hide it from visitors," says Dr Yiorgos Astrinakis, a resident psychiatrist at the hospital.

"But this hospital belongs to the public and they have the right to know where they might end up if they get sick."

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Source: BBC News

Events & Publications

European Conference on Implementation of UN CRPD

Event Date: Saturday, August 29, 2009

Disabled People's International (DPI) Europe is organising a conference in Budapest, Hungary on the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Report on Direct Payments in Eight European Countries

The Expertise Centre Independent Living has finished its first report 'Direct payments in the care: Current situation in 8 European countries' (the Netherlands, England, Sweden, Norway, Spain, France, Germany and Finland). The report is available in English and French.

New Guides for Advocates Promote Good Practice

Two new resource guides for advocates have been published to promote best practice in advocacy provision. The guides, produced and published by umbrella charity Action for Advocacy (A4A), focus on effective use of Human Rights principles in advocacy work and ways of monitoring and measuring the outcomes of advocacy practice.