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The Government has accelerated the opening of the new Central Mental Hospital in North Dublin to allow isolation of patients with symptoms of Covid-19.
The hospital is the only state facility to hold and treat people with serious mental illness who have committed serious crimes. The current facility in Dundrum, south of Dublin, contains 84 beds and generally operates at 100% capacity, which means that there are often long waiting lists for prisoners with mental illness in the prison system awaiting admission.
At the start of the pandemic, the crowded nature of the facilities and the vulnerability of the patient population led management to look for ways to free up space.
The Irish Prison Service has freed up space by allowing some inmates to be released temporarily, but the same cannot be done at Central Mental Hospital, where patients often reintroduce themselves to society slowly and gradually, sometimes for several years.
The entire Central Mental Hospital was to move from the 170-year-old facility in Dundrum to a newly constructed 170-bed complex in Portrane, north of Dublin, later this year. However, due to the pandemic, health authorities decided to put part of the new facilities into operation this week.
The patients were transferred for the past few days and will remain in Portrane until the most severe stage of the pandemic has passed. They will then return to Dundrum before returning to Portrane with all the other patients later this year.
COVID-19 symptoms
Central Mental Hospital director Professor Harry Kennedy said this week’s move freed an entire room in Dundrum that could now be used to isolate patients with symptoms of Covid-19 or confirmed cases of the virus.
Although the virus has harshly affected other parts of the mental health system, there have been 12 deaths at facilities across the country, there have been no confirmed cases at Central Mental Hospital. A small number of patients showing symptoms had been isolated for short periods while awaiting testing, but all were subsequently eliminated.
However, Professor Kennedy believes it is “only a matter of time before we get a cluster. But now we can cope properly when that happens. ”
Like prisoners, patients at Central Mental Hospital are considered especially vulnerable to Covid-19.
“A proportion of our patients are elderly because they have been here for a long time. But even more, our patients have multiple comorbidities, so in addition to having serious mental illnesses, many of them will have other physical problems. High blood pressure, diabetes, they will all be much more common here. “
The hospital began taking steps to prevent an outbreak at any early stage. Visits have been suspended and patients have their temperature controlled twice a day.
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