Human Rights Commission: "Mental Rehabilitation Facilities Insufficient Compared to Number of Patients"… Recommends Expansion to Local Governments

[Asia Economy Reporter Seongpil Cho] The National Human Rights Commission of Korea announced on the 13th that it has recommended the Minister of Health and Welfare to support budgets for the installation and operation of at least one crisis shelter and community transition facility in each of the 17 metropolitan cities and provinces. It also demanded that concrete measures be prepared to ensure that at least one usage-type psychiatric rehabilitation facility is installed and operated in each of the 226 basic local governments nationwide. The heads of the 17 metropolitan cities and provinces were recommended to expand psychiatric rehabilitation facilities and services.

Earlier, as a result of the National Human Rights Commission conducting the "Survey on the Operation and Usage Status of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Facilities and the Human Rights Status of Users," it was found that as of 2020, there were 350 psychiatric rehabilitation facilities nationwide with a capacity of 7,166 users. The Commission diagnosed this as a very insufficient level, representing about 2.3% compared to the estimated 311,000 people with severe mental illnesses and about 6.9% compared to the 103,000 registered mentally disabled individuals.

The Commission also confirmed that half of the psychiatric rehabilitation facilities are concentrated in the Seoul and Gyeonggi areas, leaving mentally disabled individuals living in other regions without facilities available for use after discharge from psychiatric medical institutions. Furthermore, it was revealed that usage-type facilities available for mentally disabled individuals to use during daytime hours in their residential areas account for less than half of the psychiatric rehabilitation facilities.

Based on these survey results, the Commission reviewed related improvement measures to promote the human rights of mentally disabled individuals and community integration. In this process, it was judged that the current "Mental Health Welfare Act" and subordinate laws in Korea lack legal provisions for crisis shelters, community transition facilities of the intermediate house type that connect from hospitals to homes, and supported residential services. The Commission also noted that the admission period for residential psychiatric rehabilitation facilities is limited to 2 to 5 years, and once this period expires, mentally disabled individuals are forced to move to more poor living environments such as gosiwon (small, cheap rooms) or homeless shelters.

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