Mexican Heiress Sets International Standard for Mental Health Treatment

http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2002/may/mexico/index.htmlOne Woman's Crusade for the Mentally IllMexican Heiress Sets International Standard for TreatmentMental health advocate Virginia Gonzalez TorresOnly staff were allowed in this Ocaranza courtyard. Through the back gate was a shadeless courtyard, where patients were left to sit naked in the midday sun.May 27, 2002 -- In the 1960s, advocates for the mentally ill badgered authorities into closing squalid psychiatric hospitals in the United States. But they were less successful in getting community-based facilities for the mentally ill opened. American cities ended up with the mentally ill living -- and suffering -- on the streets. Today in Mexico, there's a woman leading a similar revolution against large psychiatric asylums, but she's taking it one step further. NPR's Joanne Silberner reports for All Things Considered.For 25 years, Virginia Gonzalez Torres has been facing down anyone who neglects or abuses Mexico's mentally ill. Now a 53-year-old mother of four, she began her crusade after her older sister was sent to a private psychiatric hospital to be treated for manic depression.Gonzalez, an heiress, grew up in a wealthy and politically connected family in Mexico City. When her sister fell ill, Gonzalez was 22. At the time, the only psychotic people she encountered were characters on movie screens; they frightened her so much, she says, that she would run out of theater. Swallowing her fears, Gonzalez visited her sister every day. As she grew more comfortable with her sister and the other patients, her rebellious side came out. Out of curiosity, she was soon making visits to public institutions. Gonzalez was overwhelmed by what she found: the traumatized faces of patients, their screams for help, the smell of neglect. She started visiting other facilities, including the Fernando Ocaranza Mental Hospital, about an hour north of Mexico City. Ocaranza is a turreted medieval fortress that rises out of dusty fields. Until a year and a half ago, it was a hellhole, virtually a prison, for seriously ill mental patients. Gonzalez saw patients left naked in the midday sun, with nothing to do and no access to a bathroom. Urine and feces where everywhere. Men and women were put in small areas together. Patients no longer knew their names. Gonzalez couldn't stand by. She starting confronting politicians, lodging complaints, and when that didn't work, she scaled Ocaranza's walls with TV reporters from the United States and Mexico. Her efforts led to the closing of Ocaranza -- but that wasn't enough. Gonzalez insisted that the money spent on Ocaranza be used on homes for the patients. Those who were seriously ill would live on hospital grounds in new villas. Others would live in group homes in regular neighborhoods, taking classes, taking care of themselves and even earning money through crafts they made.Mental health experts who know Gonzalez' work say she's taken treatment ideas pioneered in richer countries like the United States, Italy and Spain and pushed them beyond what anyone expected was possible. Advocacy groups like Mental Disability Rights International say her two-step advocacy -- closing hospitals and setting up halfway houses -- is setting an international standard.There's still much left to do, says Gonzalez. Thirty-one psychiatric hospitals still warehouse thousands of mental patients in Mexico, and Gonzalez is getting ready to go public with videos of the squalid conditions inside 15 of those institutions.
You are subscribed to HealthNewsList.~~~Referrals are appreciated.Send Inquiries to:HealthNewsList@aol.com