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The City of Mati LGU thru the City Health Office’s Acute Psychiatric Care Unit (APCU) has been holding weekly psychiatric consultation since last month thru teleconferencing.

With the regional and provincial quarantine lockdowns in effect, patients suffering from mental illness in the City of Mati and other neighboring towns are still being treated by a psychiatrist based in the Southern Philippines Medical Center in Davao City.

The session is made thru video teleconferencing every Wednesday for the past three weeks now.

Eugene Syting, Nurse Program Coordinator of the CHO’s Community Mental Health Program, said the telepsych is a big help to their patients especially during the lockdowns.

The City of Mati LGU thru Mayor Michelle Nakpil Rabat entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Southern Philippines Medical for the accommodation of Mati’s mental patients in the SPMC’s Institute of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science.

The agreement gave rise to the telepsychiatric facility inside the APCU building in Barangay Dahican this city.

Syting said that since 2016, they have already catered to at least 140 Mati residents suffering from various mental illnesses. He said that under the new administration, they were provided with the equipment needed for teleconferencing thus the start of their telepsych.

Dr. Reagan Joseph Villanueva, Medical Specialist II from the SPMC, is the one conducting the telepsych session with Mati patients on Wednesday.

Aside from telepsych, the APCU also offer depot medication for their patients. They also supply tablets and other medications for their mental patients.

For now, additional personnel is very much needed considering their growing number of patients in the facility.

Just a few days ago, a resident from Maragusan who is working in Mati sought the help of the LGU as he suspect that he is again suffering from mental illness.

A team from CHO readily visited him at his boarding house and decided to bring him to the APCU facility for treatment and monitoring. The patient said he was admitted to a mental hospital in Cebu before.

Another patient was also able to escape from the facility Wednesday morning. The patient is said to be pyschotic.

Syting said they need at least two personnel for every shifting plus addditional personnel that could handle patients who are violent at times.

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Mati’s telepsych is the first that’s being maintained by a local government unit. Mati LGU aims to improve the facility soon so they could cater more patients most especially those who could not afford the private mental institutions.

All of the facility’s stay-in patients right now are rescued from the streets of Mati. They are nourished, treated and provided with the essential medications for them to become mentally-stable. All of the services are given by the City of Mati LGU free of charge be they residents of Mati or not. (CIO MATI)