It’s another crisis born of the crisis. The number of young people attempting suicide has grown exponentially in Portugal and there is simply not enough help for them. In Coimbra alone, 33 teenagers tried to commit suicide in the first half of this year – while incidences of depression among young people are sky-rocketing. The news comes from the head of child psychiatry at Coimbra children’s hospital, José Garrido.
Quoted in Público newspaper, Garrido explains that due to the lack of hospital beds nationally – there are only 20 in the whole country and none in the Algarve – many youngsters end up on adult psychiatric wards, “an experience that can affect them badly”. “Instead of bringing peace, it can be very traumatic,” he warns.
Backed by colleagues who have now written an open letter on “the hospitalised child”, Garrido’s comments are developed by Augusto Carreira, head of the Portuguese association of child and teenage psychiatry (Associação Portuguesa de Psiquiatria da Infância e da Adolescência).
The doctors’ plan now is to push the government for a change in policy. The letter, “Carta da Criança Hospitalizada”, states: “Children should not be admitted onto adult wards. They should stay within their own age groups, so that they can benefit from games and other activities more suited to their situations.”
As Carreira explains to Público, “suicide cases need to be admitted into hospital for us to evaluate the seriousness of the attempt and the existence of risk.”
And, irrespective of young people’s desperate bids to kill themselves, Carreira lifts the lid on another ‘craze’ that has parents travelling up and down the country seeking help in despair – cases of self-mutilation, where youngsters, particularly teenage girls, harm themselves on purpose.
“Families are very disoriented,” he stresses. “In order to develop properly, children need to feel protected. In the context in which we live, families do not feel tranquil. They do not know if they will get to the end of the month with enough money to feed their children.”
“The resources we have” to cope with current problems “are bursting at the seams”, he stresses.
“A child that goes through crisis will stay with marks. It is not like a company that, once the crisis is over, will go back to making a profit. The effect of the loss continues.”
The situation is a concern for the Algarve, too, as in the region there are no hospital beds for young people with mental problems.
Carreira told Público of the case of one 16-year-old from the Algarve who took “a long time” to be offered a bed when she badly needed professional in-patient treatment, as the 10 ‘nearest’ beds – in Lisbon’s Dona Estefânia hospital – were already filled, and the other 10 available were only to be found in Porto.
Zulmira Correia, in charge of child psychiatry in the north of Portugal, added that when youngsters are admitted onto adult wards, they face a confusing world reminiscent of the tragic comedy film ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’. It is damaging and families feel stigmatised – while schoolmates are not even allowed to visit their young friends.
Correia made the point that, by law, children and teenagers are not even meant to share the same waiting rooms as adults – so the lack of sufficient beds is even more serious.
Now faced with considering the problem carefully, director of Portugal’s mental health programme Álvaro de Carvalho confirmed the “greater pressure” for inpatient treatment of youngsters “since the crisis”.
“The situation sets off emotional tensions that very often lead to emotional crises in which in-patient treatment can be a solution,” he told Público.
Official figures put the number of youngsters receiving in-patient treatment for mental problems in 2011 at 295 – with an average stay of up to nine days at a time.
As José Garrido spelt it out, the situation is getting worse. “We are a country in stress.”
