Despoina Drivakou
The Odyssey of a patient in the mental health system in Greece, is the case of a 24 year girl she met in Thessaloniki three years ago at OKANA( National organization against drugs) where she was working then as a counselor. The girl came in contact with mental health services due to addiction in drugs in the begging. Comorbidity with psychiatric illness was not diagnosed then even if she had escaped from a psychiatric clinic of Patra’s local hospital. Her father was a Greek man from Patra and her mother from Finland. In the past she had some help from social services, because her mother had some addiction with alcohol and after years when she gave birth to a girl , when she was 19. The father of the baby run away. The incident was managed driven exploitation of family possibilities and resources offered by the environment. The presentation includes a video. There is a conversation between me and a colleague. We are discussing about the girl’s odyssey from Peloponnese to North Greece, the difficulty of the system to act rapidly, the family relationships and the Greek reality of the economical regression. 22 mental health services are involved in this story. The first meeting in OKANA was the cause for this patient to meet her mother again after three years, after she took her two year old grand daughter in Finland, without her permission with the excuse to protect the baby, due to her drug use life style. A 25 years man, drug addicted and member of OKANA open access program, brought the girl to her for the first time. After this very first time meeting she was disappeared till a homeless man that came from Patra in Thessaloniki met the girl in the streets the summer of 2014. He helped her to find food and a bed at homeless center of municipality of Thessaloniki. He brought her to OKANA open access programme again. Now the girl is living in Finland in a open house for mental health patients with schizophrenia in Finland.