"A lot of difficulty and suffering", "This is a population that we need to be aware of and attentive to", "The situation is screaming out of the paper and out of the pictures" and "It is good that the petition was filed".
The extraordinary remarks were made by Supreme Court justices last Wednesday, when we heard a petition by the Psychiatric Association of the Medical Association against the Minister of Health and his office, demanding an increase in the hospitalization and living space of about 4,000 mental patients in all psychiatric hospitals. It is difficult due to the health of the patients. "
Justices Neil Handel, Anat Baron and Yosef Elron, who supported the importance of the petition and its justification, ordered the Ministry of Health to submit an update within 90 days on an action plan to improve the distress of the psychiatric hospital.
In the petition - filed in May 2021 by Adv. Efrat Geller Nitzan, of the Clinic for the Advancement of Health at Reichman University - the union demanded that the Ministry of Health establish, for the first time, an adequate living space for psychiatric hospitalization, prepare a plan to set goals and set a reasonable timetable for implementation.
The union, which has about 1,000 psychiatrists, explained in the petition that "the living space has a direct and indirect effect on the recovery process of those hospitalized in the psychiatric system. The living space problem has been known to the Ministry of Health and professionals for many years." .
"Basic right to a minimum living space." Conditions of hospitalization in the "Kfar Shaul" psychiatric hospitals in Jerusalem and "Geha" in Petah Tikva
In its response to the petition, the Ministry of Health wrote that "there is no dispute as to the very need to change and improve the construction of psychiatric wards in order to reduce overcrowding and congestion in hospitals. Implement the plans. "
At the court hearing, Judge Handel said that "the issue is a very important and good tier that has been filed, and it may have already had an impact."
Judge Baron said that "the budget needs to be translated into action, and this is a very acute matter of the possibility of demarcating a living area for patients - and it sounds, and not just sounds, screams out of the paper and pictures.
Dr. Zvi Fischel, the outgoing chairman of the union and one of the initiators of the petition, told Israel Today: "We encourage."
Advocate Daniel Raz, the national commissioner for involuntary hospitalization in the Legal Aid Division of the Ministry of Justice, said that "the Supreme Court has understood the severe distress of many people who have no basic living conditions, and must the state find a proper solution to the severe distress."
The Right - The Center for the Advancement of Human Rights for People with Disabilities "responded:" First and foremost, the severe overcrowding in psychiatric hospitals is due to the fact that there is almost no response in the community: long waiting times for psychotherapy, lack of response to crisis situations in the community, home care and more. "In the absence of an answer to these, the road to hospitalization is short, too short. The time has come to reduce the number of hospitalizations that could have been avoided, thus reducing the unbearable overcrowding in psychiatric hospitals."
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