Mumbai: Nine months after the inauguration of a dedicated psychiatry ward at the state-run St George’s Hospital near CST, female patients still cannot be admitted because the hospital has not appointed a female night attendant, a mandatory requirement for admitting female patients.
A 20-bed male psychiatry ward has been functional since September 2025, primarily admitting patients with addiction issues. However, the 10-bed female enclosure remains locked.
St George’s Hospital established a psychiatry unit under Dr Sarika Dakshikar last year. Yet, teething problems persist. For instance, the department’s outpatient clinic is shared with the Chest/TB department. In an April letter to senior government officials and ministers, Dr Yusuf Matcheswalla, the hospital’s honorary professor of psychiatry, highlighted both issues.
“Without minimal female attendants, we cannot ensure safe and culturally appropriate inpatient care for women, who constitute a significant proportion of our psychiatric caseload,” Dr Matcheswalla wrote.
His primary concern regarding the OPD is that many psychiatric patients are “already vulnerable because of severe mental illness, co-morbid medical conditions and compromised immunity.” His letter describes the shared OPD with TB patients as both “clinically and ethically unacceptable.” Dr Matcheswalla told TOI that he donated an electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) machine to the hospital, but it remains unused because the hospital has not appointed an anaesthetist required for the ECT procedure. ECT is sometimes used to rapidly relieve severe mental illnesses when medications and psychotherapy are ineffective.
Hospital authorities, however, insisted that each issue is being addressed. “We have already carried out recruitment of Class IV staff and they should be joining within a month. Female ayahs will be available for night duty thereafter,” said St George’s Hospital medical superintendent Dr Vinay Sawardekar.
The British-era hospital faces a space crunch, especially as new equipment and specialties are added. During ongoing renovation, an OPD space has been created near the MRI machine. “This space will be utilised for Chest TB OPD at the earliest,” said Dr Sawardekar.
Dr Matcheswalla noted that psychiatry departments in other state-run hospitals also face problems. “GT Hospital, another major public psychiatric centre, lacks ECT, while JJ Hospital’s male psychiatry ward is currently under repair. Hence ECT availability in the city is limited,” he said, adding that providing ECT at St George’s Hospital would reduce the therapeutic gap for thousands of patients.
