PSYCHIATRY OR THE LOST WARD OF EL RAZI

388e jour après Ben Ali

As long as I remember, a psychiatric hospital always was this site of gloomy pictures, poeple in camisoles, poeple screaming, vomit and feces randomly found this hellish site.

As long as I remember, those were the frightening pictures that come flashing by as I pass the metal door of the hospital on my way to school. This hospital is located in the newly nominated “gouvernorat of Manouba”. I guess back when it was built it was supposed to be this space at the end of space. A place almost like a country retreat for poeple that we want to hide, poeple we dont want to talk about and poeple we would rather didn’t exist.

As ironic as it sounds Manouba hosts yet another center of the forgotten the orphanage or the “institut de protection de lenfance” as the Tunisian governement wants to call it.

To my dissapointment, all my hellish fears are true. The imaginary pictures that I gathered from watching way too many old asylum movies happen to be true. All those excruciating procedures I studied about and which are a thing of the past in most countries still exist in My COUNTRY.

I myself never stepped foot there, but I gathered information from patients and doctors I happened to know throughout the years. According to these patients the hospital “El Razi” is run similarly and in the same spirit as a prison. The condition of the patients is degrading, considered as low lives, lychees. No wonder why if you ever talk about this spot it always comes like a joke or an insult.

Mental illness is by far a crime.Yet in Tunisia, the same politics and teh same dynamics exist in assylum as much as in prison.

Questions arise and need answers : Why is our psychiatric department stuck in time in Tunisia? We all know we have teh means to make it work! brilliant doctors and staff but why are they so “jemenfoutiste” ? Where is their common goal and their common sermon to try to make a patient’s life from its beginning to its end a more diginified one? didn’t they swear and repeated out loud this “I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.”

Hippocrated oath Doesn’t also mention “I will maintain the utmost respect for human life, from the time of its conception” All these ethical choices yet our patients are to be treated as prisoners. They are allowed one hour of sunlight in the morning. Some will sit for hours drenched in feces and pee. I do now see in any of this a repect to human life or dignity ? Are we in lack of personnel no of course not. In fact, Tunisia “Exports” most of its doctors and nurses to the middle east. Our unemployment rate is sky high. So it is not a problem of finding competent personel that will work their country.

Is privatization of the public hospitals an answer May be and may be not ? Where is the root to all of it ?? Would it make them more conscious if it was a private company that sets their rules ??
Any society has taboos and dogmas about mental illness from the more developped to the less developped, I am in no way saying Tunisians are unique in this phenomena. My anger is more about how far away we are. We seem to be rolling almost a century away from what others are seeing and experiencing.

We are up to date in most medical areas, cancer , genetics and so on. We probably dont have the potential to have the latest gizmo in our hospitals but we survive .. yet when it comes to the crazies we are stuck in time.

Its about time we start bursting this bubble, from depression. to schizophrenia, or autism this could be you, me, my son or daughter that could one day need a hospitalization. one day I could step foot there because it is supposed to be a “haven” a secure place for me to get better and get back on my feet, and not a life sentence or a sanction. Mentall illness is not a crime and we need to start acting like it is not.

It is time a visit to El Razi starts being a trampoline and a new start to a better life either medicated or not. Its time we turn to our mentally ill and act on making their life better even a day at a time.

Start talking, start discussing and burst the bubble.