Pretoria - The Weskoppies Psychiatric Hospital in Pretoria opened its doors to the public for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic by hosting a family day at the weekend.
Acting social work manager Yvette Gerber said the aim was to bring patients and their families together by participating in relationship-building activities and providing information about mental health.
Gerber said such events were crucial in the patient’s recovery journey, in particular strengthening family relationships, by providing them with information about mental health as they wanted the families to assist with reintegrating members back into the home, and into the communities they came from.
Often after treatment they were sent home, and getting them reintegrated proved challenging, said Gerber.
She said stigma around mental health and negative attitudes about patients still persisted.
“Users come here to receive treatment and then they have to go back into the community, and to do that successfully we have to begin with making sure the family understands and sees the change, to destigmatise mental illness.”
Manisha Kalyan, who chairs the Family Day committee and is a social worker at the facility, said family involvement was encouraged in a patient’s journey to recovery, and rehabilitation was key from the onset, beginning from the admission process.
Visiting patients regularly until the discharge stage was also important, though it could be challenging.
“Limited family involvement and support is a huge challenge in mental health, and that is why we create such events, because stigma often begins with the families. But if we can enlighten them they can spread the information (in) the community…”
Pretoria News