“I asked for hospitalization in a nursing home”

PADUA – A suffering that had become unbearable led her to throw herself from the first floor window of the Mental Health Center in via dei Colli in Padua yesterday morning, following an interview with the psychiatrist on duty. The 18-year-old girl is not in danger of dying, but she is currently hospitalized in the Neurosurgery department of the University Hospital, following an operation to stabilize the spine after the trauma suffered from the fall. The young woman has been followed for at least three years by the Mental Health and Psychiatry services, both by Ulss 6 and by the university hospital. She is known to Social Services, she has been entrusted to a support administrator. Despite this, the girl’s existential discomfort took over yesterday, resulting in a suicide attempt. According to the family, however, the drama could have been avoided. The 18-year-old’s mother decided to rely on the lawyer Cinzia Ulmiri to clarify her responsibilities and to denounce “the inadequacy of the existing treatment project”.

THE REFLECTION

Harsh words those pronounced by the mother’s legal representative. «The patient had been under treatment for some time at the Mental Health Center of Padua which believed that the aforementioned could be treated in a day hospital regime – specifies the lawyer Ulmiri -. For months, her mother had been insisting that she could be temporarily banned to ensure lasting care and also to preserve her safety, given that she had already attempted suicide many times, but this request remained unanswered. The gesture of this young woman had been foretold several times and only a miracle spared her from death or paralysis ». The 18-year-old, following her fall, suffered a trauma to the spine and a fractured vertebra. “Unfortunately, many times a mother’s cry for help is little considered because she certainly doesn’t have medical skills, but one wonders how previous suicide attempts, daily visits to psychiatry, signs of inadequacy, all ‘evidence of the existing treatment project – continues Ulmiri -. One wonders how an extreme fact is always necessary. The girl had been in and out of the psychiatry department of the Padua hospital for months, so much so that the same doctors who visited her in a state of emergency wondered why she wasn’t banned, giving doctors the opportunity to treat her in a nursing home adequately stabilizing the therapy to then think of recovering it under other profiles, scholastic-educational, and finally being able to think of a project of social reintegration. Instead it was preferred to leave the patient to her “autonomous” choice of being treated or not, of taking therapy or not, with this result”. In short, the mother asked for a long-term residency project in a nursing home.

THE ANSWER

On Friday the girl had gone to the psychiatry department of the University Hospital, and then presented herself yesterday morning at the territorial service. Through a note, Ulss Euganea clarifies: “The young woman has long been followed with great commitment, attentive and impeccable professionalism by the Mental Health Center of Ulss, in a work of synergy between all the actors necessary for taking charge of the complex clinical and social situation of the girl. It should be noted that the young woman does not appear to have previously committed suicidal gestures. Received in a professional and welcoming manner, and agreed to return to the care ward from which she came, without any kind of warning, the young woman projected herself from the window on the first floor of the building. She was immediately rescued and at the same time Suem 118 was called, which quickly arrived on site. The lawyer’s statements that do not correspond to the reality of the impeccable clinical management of the patient by the appointed services are astonishing».

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