CIUDAD DEL ESTE (Health, by Magenta López) There is a huge contradiction between what the Ministry of Health proclaims and what really happens in practice. Just a few days ago, national media published the situation of the successful Paraguayan actor Javier Krotsty Enciso who At his peak, he was recognized worldwide for his participation in Paraguayan films such as Luna de Cicadas, for which he was nominated for several awards, and he even worked for Netflix in the series “O Mechanism.” However, in the recent mention of him in the national media, there is no talk of his talented acting career, but of a sad situation that lives in Paraguay and afflicts hundreds of people, and it is the lack of assistance on issues related to Mental health. If health in Paraguay is already crap, what wouldn’t it be when diseases are invisible? wake up, your heartbeat hurts because of the speed and force with which it beats, your mouth dries up and those thoughts do not stop screaming inside your head over and over again things that you cannot say with your mouth…
Javier Enciso, Paraguayan actor
The Ministry of Health has a beautiful campaign regarding Mental Health where they urge citizens to go to public medical centers and use this service that is available to everyone… However, we want to echo a very serious complaint that we received via Twitter, where a young woman from the city of Asunción complained about the lack of care at the Hospital de Clínicas, and it is that she was trying to schedule an appointment with a psychiatrist for a long time, since she is in active treatment, and simply never No one answered the phone, when he then went to the hospital and asked the emergency room to see a psychiatrist they simply denied him, telling him that his case “was not an emergency”, that of course was after they told him to make an appointment by phone, which he already tried but no one attended, they told him to go to the mental health area and at this reception they simply confirmed that they do not attend without an appointment, and they sent him back to the emergency room, practically the answer was: if it is so urgent… go away to the emergency room, and after this tour they tell him that it simply “is not an emergency”… that is, since his pulses were not cut, nor with the rope tied around his neck, and also he had no fever or cough in the last 24 hours simply it is not an emergency.
We are talking about MENTAL health ladies and gentlemen!! and we are never going to see what is going on in the mind of another person, the external signs of alarm and urgency are already present when the situation is extreme, absolutely all human beings try until the last moment not to lose our composure, not to going in screaming, with a gun in hand to ask someone to help us, fainting, seizures, uncontrolled screaming, tachycardia, babbling, delusions, are extreme states.
We regret the lack of training of those who are in hospital receptions pointing their fingers at you matter because you are with the bone outside after falling off the motorcycle, you do not matter, because even if you say that in your mind something is getting out of control that not seen We regret that the same doctors must be the ones who answer the calls to schedule an appointment. How are they going to interrupt the care of one patient to schedule another? that doesn’t make sense, the office session is too delicate, it’s a private moment that shouldn’t be interrupted. We regret that the mental health law promulgated in 2022 has no effect in practice, that the Ministry of Health says how important it is to take care of mental health but does not provide sufficient resources, we regret that people like Javier Enciso today are in a situation street for not being able to count on the necessary help, accompaniment, support and empathy that this society requires to reach out to those who do not bleed on the outside and are more dead than alive every day.
A great responsibility awaits the new president and his team and we hope that Mental Health is not left again in the last place in the order of importance, health is declining in general in Paraguay, but this epidemic of mental patients, among children and young people with autism and other syndromes that require attention, stimulation, among other things, adults and young people submerged in addictions, excessive violence between us and against the most defenseless, between suicides and femicides, between abandonment and retention of people against their will, all of this and more is the reflection of a sick society, and we keep talking about mental health.
We share the Link of the Mental Health directory, so you know according to your city where you can go https://www.mspbs.gov.py/dependencias/portal/adjunto/cc117f-DirectorioSaludMentalversionACTUALIZADOaAbril2023.pdf