Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Mar 17 2011 (IPS) – Argentina has begun the process of closing down psychiatric hospitals and integrating mentally ill people into the community, like its South American neighbours Brazil and Chile.
Human rights organisations, mental health professionals and patients relatives pushed for a new mental health act, which was finally unanimously approved by the Argentine Congress in late November.
The law is in line with the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, ratified by Argentina in 2008. But all the parties involved admit that enforcing it will be a slow process.
The law is simply a milestone along the way; implementing it will take time, national director of mental health Yago d…
Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Apr 15 2011 (IPS) – Since the horrific Mar. 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated her coastal town of Minato, in Ishinomaki city, Masami Endo s three-year-old daughter has been crying and clinging to her every night.
My daughter, Sakura, has never cried in fear of darkness till this disaster. She is completely different to the rather cheerful but also kind of stoic child she was before, Endo, a single mother, told IPS.
Endo is very worried about her child. The two of watched the tsunami swarm into their town and through the first floor of their house, destroying the structure badly. Ishinomaki is located in Miyagi- prefecture, about 330 kilometres north of Tokyo.
The story of Sakura is just one example of the thousands of tales o…