Inspectors yet to report on autistic young man’s death
Stelios Mastoropoulos was just 21 when he died on February 21, 2007. Severely autistic, he had lived for many years at the Attica Children’s Psychiatric Hospital (PNA). His parents visited him frequently; he had acquired skills and was flourishing. A few months before his death, however, he had been moved to the Athina hostel in Kifissia, against his parents’ wishes. The hostel is one of the private units set up to house the mentally ill as psychiatric institutions gradually close down, and none of them is specialized in dealing with autism. The parents repeatedly but unsuccessfully protested to the Health Ministry that their child «was wasting away and not receiving the care he needed.» The warnings of the hostel staff that they «could not handle the case» fell on deaf ears. Eventually Stelios died. Seven months later, the report by the Health and Welfare Inspectorate on the cause of his death and the living conditions at the hostel has yet to reach Special Secretary for Mental Health Maria-Angeliki Trohani. «Despite our constant reminders, the inspectors have not yet sent us their report,» Trohani told Kathimerini. So far the coroner’s report is the only official document Stelios’s parents have. It states the cause of death as «choking on food.» «In the space of just a few months, the child became a vegetable; they kept giving him suppressant drugs. He couldn’t even eat,» his mother told Kathimerini. Georgia Sideri, the new PNA director, speaks of failures by both the hospital and the hostel. (Her predecessor Christina Economou was suspended following the tragic incident by then Health Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos on the grounds that she ignored the warnings that Stelios could not handle the conditions in that hostel.) «The death of Stelios was the tragic occasion for us to set new criteria for the collaboration of psychiatric hospitals and boarding houses and hostels. We have already set up a special team which will look into it when a unit requests help with a patient,» she explained. «It was clear in the case of Stelios that they didn’t know how to handle him and that there was no proper communication with the hospital. I am not in a position to know whether the child was neglected, but my view is always to respect the parents’ opinion. They know their child and his needs.» The Athina hostel is still operating. «There’s good cooperation, though it’s not perfect,» said Sideri, «but only the ministry and the inspectors can make recommendations.» The process of deinstitutionalizing people with mental illnesses continues, but provisions for the mentally ill are in a poor state in Greece. The Union of Workers in Psychosocial Rehabilitation Units claims there are still problems with funding for the units, which disrupts their operation and diminishes the quality of services provided. «We’re being held hostage,» said Angeliki Sylligardaki on behalf of the workers’ union at Perovolaki. «Staff turnover is very high because of these problems. Nobody can stand the work for long. As soon as they gain experience, they leave. So the therapy program is at risk.» Patients with autism are the worst off. Even though an estimated 50,000 Greek children have autism, Greece still has no specialized unit for them. The Autism Reference Center to be set up at PNA will operate purely in an advisory capacity. «Parents of children with autism in Greece are in despair. Not because of their children’s condition but because they are in a country which acts as if the illness did not exist,» said Stelios’s mother. «We went through hell in the last few months of Stelios’s life, but we couldn’t help save our child. For some people, he was just a number in the process of deinstitutionalization. For us, he was our prince and he is not there anymore.»
