Weekly updates at MSP

As the month is nearly getting to its end, all the staff and personnel at HP-SVP (Hôpital Psychiatrique St Vincent de Paul)is doing well, everyone trying to do the best in his/her duties. During this last week at HP-SVP we had a lot of events going on but three of them call for a special attention to our readers.

As it was remarked by one of our staff, this time “patients are coming towards us, instead of us going to them”. Usually we receive patients accompanied and addressed by parents and relatives or otherwise addressed by some authority for consultation. In other incidences, the staff of hospital organizes, time to time, a “pick-up operation” in the city and its surroundings to pick up patients who err in the streets. Most of these patients don’t have relatives or families around to address them. We take them and treat them without charges while carrying out social inquiries about their families and origins. This last week we have been seeing 3 patients who, instead of erring in the city, have been erring around our hospital. It made our operation so easy, for we just opened the door for them to come in. We just needed some strategies to convince them that they are not coming in the hospital, otherwise, they wouldn't dare coming in.

On Wednesday, the social team accompanied one of our residents to his beloved family after about 3 months in our hospital and more than a year in the streets of Yamoussoukro. This resident was picked up in the streets by the hospital during one of our pick-up operations. After 2 months of treatment and therapy, he started recalling some names of relatives and his origins. We took him back in the streets where he was picked up to see if he could be recognized by those who used to see him before, when he was sick. Unexpectedly, we met individuals who knew him back home, one of them being his aunt. That was the starting point of connecting with his family which he joined this last week. It was the real “return of the prodigal son”.

At the end of this last week, the HP-SVP received about 20 school children who came to visit our residents with gifts. These children from St Jean Morofe parish organized a fund-raising program in their schools and community and they collected food and other valuable gifts which were donated to our residents. Most of these children have never seen or been in contact with individuals who suffer from mental illnesses. This visit was an eye-opener to what mental illness is all about. At the end of their visit, they went back home rejoicing and ready to continue their mission of eradicating the wide spread taboo on mental illness.


For more photos on this visit, click here.



Finally, all the staff at HP-SVP sends a warm "Congratulations!" to our colleague, Mr Martin and his family, who welcomed their new baby this last Tuesday. May God bless him and his family.

Jean-Clement, RN, BSN.