It is welcome that since March 2019, a patient risk assessment system has been introduced in all the
units of the National Mental Health Centre. Nevertheless, during psycho-diagnostic examination, no
triggers293 of patients posing a danger of violence are identified along with assessing their risks, which
would have enabled staff to be aware of the patients’ provocative factors and help them avoid violence.
The documentation produced by the institution shows that no psychotherapy is provided for the
management of the behavior of patients who pose a high risk of violence and only pharmacotherapy is
used, in particular, the doses of medication are increased.
The National Mental Health Centre documents the cases of violence against patients and responses to
such cases only in the patient's medical cards and the patient monitoring journals and, in most cases,
they do not indicate the time of violence, the persons involved in the incident, or the causes of
violence.294 Batumi Medical Centre has a special journal for the above, which provides more or less
accurate information about the cases of violence.
As for the documentation of responses to the cases of violence, according to the practice of the National
Mental Health Centre and Batumi Medical Centre, victims of violence do not receive
psychotherapeutic support or legal aid. When patients suffer physical injuries as a result of violence,
only medical intervention is provided, which involves treatment for bodily injuries. In response to the
inter-patient conflict, patients are sometimes separated from each other by being transferred to
different wards. The legal documents of the institutions do not specify in what cases and by whom the
incident of violence should be reported to an investigative body and no relevant statistics are
maintained.
In order to protect the rights of patients and provide quality services to them, the National Mental
Health Centre and Batumi Medical Centre have internal complaints mechanisms, which is welcome.
However, the Special Preventive Group considers that the internal rights protection mechanism is
faulty and cannot properly ensure the protection of patients' rights. Another problem is that the
institutions do not provide patients with adequate information about their rights or external complaints
mechanisms. The obligation to provide information is not regulated by any normative act.
293
Situations or stimuli which can lead to a range of emotions, including distress, frustration, anger or agitation,
which may escalate into a potentially tense and challenging situation. For details, see the WHO Course Guide:
Creating mental health and related services free from coercion, violence and abuse, p.34.
294 For example, the document on one of the incidents contains only the following information: “Beneficiary A.
during verbal confrontation, punched B in the eye area sustained a small bruise” (punctuation unchanged). No
time or circumstances of the incident, causes of conflict or response measures are described in the document.
103
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