Gyeonggi-do to Significantly Expand Support for Treatment of Patients with Mental Illness

[Asia Economy (Suwon) = Reporter Lee Young-gyu] Gyeonggi Province will operate a 'Public Transport Support Team' to prevent suspected mental illness patients who need diagnosis and treatment from being neglected due to transport issues. In addition, it will carry out a treatment cost support project for mental illness patients who cannot receive outpatient treatment.

Gyeonggi Province announced on the 25th that it will establish a 'Mental Crisis Response System' to strengthen support for hospitalization and outpatient treatment, including diagnosis, for mental illness patients in treatment blind spots, and will begin full-scale implementation next month.

This measure comes in response to a series of fatal incidents caused by severe mental illness patients, including the Jinju arson murder case that resulted in 22 casualties.

The province views the interruption of treatment for mental illness patients as potentially leading to large-scale fatal accidents and has decided to prepare and implement various support measures to prevent treatment discontinuation.

First, for suspected mental illness patients who need diagnosis and treatment but cannot be transported due to difficulties such as lack of police cooperation, the province will operate the 'Gyeonggi-do Public Transport Support Team' for cities and counties.

Under the current system, when a mental crisis occurs involving a suspected mental illness patient, the mayor or county governor can enforce administrative hospitalization for diagnosis and treatment by a psychiatric specialist regardless of the patient's consent.

However, due to concerns about human rights violations and cost burdens from the police and local governments, the treatment system often fails to operate, leaving suspected patients without even the opportunity for diagnosis and neglected.

According to the province, since 2017, out of 2,022 administrative hospitalization requests received by mayors and county governors, 445 cases (22%) were not hospitalized.

Accordingly, the province plans to form the 'Gyeonggi-do Public Transport Support Team' consisting of 10 members including general public officials and firefighters to support patient transport upon request from cities and counties.

When a mayor or county governor who has received a 'diagnosis and protection application' for a suspected mental illness patient requests transport support for 'psychiatric diagnosis referral,' dedicated personnel will identify available beds in mental health institutions within the province and simultaneously dispatch to the scene to transport the suspected mental illness patient to a designated psychiatric medical institution.

The province expects this support to reduce the burden on families of mental illness patients and to have a preventive effect on social problems such as self-harm by mental illness patients or harm to others.

However, since the responsibility for administrative hospitalization lies with the mayor or county governor, the province plans to provide support only until a regional or community-centered treatment and management system for mental illness patients is established.

Additionally, the province will expand the scope of high-risk mental crisis individuals to include potential risk suspects.

The current 'Mental Emergency Response Manual' evaluates crisis levels only based on self-harm and harm to others, limiting accurate detection of risk factors.

The province has added an evaluation scale assessing 'symptoms or treatment history,' such as the date of recent symptom onset and duration of treatment interruption, and will either request outpatient treatment support or conduct monitoring and case management based on the results.

The outpatient treatment support system, implemented in April this year, requires that when a mental illness patient who has discontinued treatment is identified, a mental health welfare center or psychiatric specialist requests support from the mayor or county governor, and after review by the Mental Health Review Committee, outpatient treatment support must be provided for up to one year.

The province has actively activated the outpatient treatment support system for severely mentally ill patients who have discontinued treatment and established a system to continuously monitor symptoms or crisis situations for early intervention when crises occur.

Furthermore, starting this year, the province will support up to 360,000 KRW per person annually for outpatient mental illness treatment costs and up to 1,000,000 KRW annually for administrative hospitalization treatment costs.

A provincial official explained, "If mental illness patients who pose a risk to themselves or others or who have discontinued treatment are neglected, the patients themselves, their families, and neighbors suffer from not receiving timely treatment. This project is significant as it supports uninterrupted treatment for severely mentally ill patients who need mental health management."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.