Pilot Project in Mexico
Virginia Gonzales Torres
In a significant initiative to improve mental health care, Mexico has introduced a pilot project called the Modelo Hidalgo de Atencion en Salud Mental. It is intended as the foundation for general reforms based on respect for the consumer’s right to receive care delivered with attention to quality, within a system of integrated medical and psychiatric services. It also marks an effort to improve often-criticized conditions in psychiatric institutions.
The Hidalgo Model won support after a change of administration in Mexico, when Vicente Fox became president in 2000 and signaled concern for mental health care by giving a prominent consumers’ advocate, Virginia Gonzalez Torres, a post in the Health Ministry. She directs a new Office of Psychosocial Rehabilitation, Citizens Participation, and Human Rights. The model program is a joint project of the Health Ministry and the Mexican Foundation for the Rehabilitation of Persons with Mental Illness, together with the governments of different Mexican states.
The reform movement focused initially on the State of Hidalgo, where conditions at the Ocaranza institution had attracted widespread criticism. Ocaranza was closed down, and a group of services was put together to provide for prevention, mental health care in the community integrated with regular health care, hospitalization where necessary, and social reintegration.
A variety of service formats are now used, including mental health services in clinics and community centers, general hospitals, psychiatric hospitals for people in the acute stages of illness, and new, very small hospital units called “villas.” The network includes various residential arrangements including halfway houses, residences for senior citizens, independent housing and group housing. Social reintegration is offered through clubs and employment opportunities at sponsored workshops and business cooperatives.
The Governor of Hidalgo attended the Pan American Health Organization’s mental health conference in Washington, D.C. on 6 November 2001, to present his state government’s mental health policy reforms and its commitment to press on with them. Virginia Gonzalez Torres was also there to describe the national government’s support for the Hidalgo Model and her personal support for consumer involvement in its development. Her staff distributed material describing the project, in Spanish and English, to health ministry representatives from other South American countries.
One of the main objectives of her office in the Health Ministry is to promote the development of the Hidalgo Model in other Mexican states, and to request sufficient funding allocations from the federal and state authorities to make this possible.