‘€œThe way we experience that stigma is that our patients are given less access to other forms of health care. If one of our patients has a medical illness as well, very frequently it’€™s overlooked or undermined by other medical professions. It’€™s considered that once you have a psychiatric illness, every time you present to hospital, it’€™s because you have a psychiatric illness’€, charges Dr Wendy Friedlander, a psychiatrist at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital.

‘€œIn my training, I remember being called to see a patient who came in in the middle of the night. I was told it’€™s a schizophrenic patient. I must come and see him. When I arrived he had actually been in a motor vehicle accident and had a broken leg. But because he was psychiatric, he was immediately sent to the psychiatrist and we see that all the time. So, we battle to get our patients to get basic medical care because they are discriminated against. They sit in our wards with severe medical illnesses that we can’€™t treat and no one wants to take responsibility for that’€, Friedlander continues.

‘€œIf it were a psychiatric hospital, that, obviously wouldn’€™t be the case. There wouldn’€™t be that discrimination. That is something that is specific to the fact that we are in a general hospital’€, she says.    

She acknowledges, however, that it’€™s nothing unheard of for a psychiatric unit to exist within a general hospital because mentally ill patients, like everyone else, also do have medical conditions, like AIDS, for example.

‘€œThe reason for having psychiatric units in general hospitals is that there is an overlap, that patients who have AIDS also have psychiatric illnesses and both need to be treated and both need to be addressed and you need to do that in a team that includes immunologists or infectious diseases specialists, physicians, perhaps surgeons as well as the psychiatrists’€.

By failing to treat patients with psychiatric problems, doctors at Chris Hani Bara, are actually disregarding the Mental Health Care Act, says Solly Mokgata, Executive Director of the South African Mental Health Federation.

‘€œA person who has a mental illness needs to be admitted at any facility and on admission be assessed to actually identify the causes that could have sparked the mental illness. People with mental disability have that right. And beyond that, if there is clear evidence that the person has got a mental illness, a person has a right to be provided with observation facilities for 48 hours prior to them being sent to a tertiary institution where they will get ongoing support. So, it is really amazing that you are finding in a hospital like Bara that mental health is put to the back-burner. It is shocking’€, he says.

Hospital management could not be reached for purposes of this report. Upon request for comment, we were told that on one was available to speak to us.