Limited allocations for mental health in Morocco, June 2015 (Fadel/France Press)
The security authorities in the Moroccan city of Casablanca managed, last Sunday, to arrest a 28 -year -old person in the Bernoussi area, showing signs of mental disorder, following the publication of a video clip threatening the perpetration of crimes against the Al -Andalus Mosque in the Anasi area of the economic capital of the country.
On August 22, a security man died in the city of Imouzar (center), after he was stabbed with a white weapon by a homeless, disturbed while practicing his work in organizing traffic. On May 10, Taroudant witnessed the killing of a young man by a person suffering from mental disorders, after he caught a fatal blow with a stone.
The crimes of mentally disturbed persons are among the complex cases in Morocco due to the overlapping of legal, medical and social dimensions. Community and legal demands are increasing to reconsider the mental health system, and to hold the authorities responsible for the neglect that entails security and humanitarian consequences.
Hundreds of mentally disturbed in the cities and villages of Morocco wander, some of whom live in the streets permanently, while others return to the homes of their families. While health centers designated to house them suffer from multiple problems, the most prominent of which is the lack of absorptive energy, and the lack of medical equipment and teams.
Over the past weeks, several areas in Morocco have witnessed crimes committed by mentally disturbed persons. Last April, a person who had previously been treated as a result of suffering from mental disorders was killed three people in the city of Bin Ahmed in the province of Berrechid, and on the eighth of last March, a person with mental illness assaulted his elderly mother until she died.
The repetition of the attacks raised the ire of human rights organizations, and the Moroccan Network to defend the right to health and the right to life (civil), last Monday, in an open message to the Moroccan government, criticized the growing phenomenon of psychological patients and the accompanying significant rise in the attacks they commit, which affects the physical safety of citizens in the public space, and may reach the point of killing or causing permanent disabilities.
The network held the governmental and mental health system responsible for the exacerbation of the situation, noting a chronic shortening, high rates of poverty and unemployment, and the spread of drugs and mental effects, as it highlighted the sharp deficiency in human and financial resources in the psychological and mental therapy sector, which suffers from a severe shortage of doctors and specialized nursing frameworks, as well as worn out the infrastructure of centers and psychological hospitals, and focuses them in Limited cities, the high prices of drugs for mental and mental illness, and some of them are lost from pharmacies and hospitals, which leads to patients stopping treatment.
On July 16, Moroccan Interior Minister Abdel -Wafi Laftit revealed in response to a question in the House of Representatives, shocking data on cases related to criminal acts committed by people with mental disorders, confirming the registration of 475 cases during the year 2024, according to which 435 people were arrested, compared to 246 cases in 2023, and 254 detainees, which means that the number doubled in one year.
In order to overcome the risks of mentally disturbed, the Moroccan Network to defend the right to health and the right to life stresses the need to increase the allocations of the mental health sector through increased budget, employ more doctors, nurses and psychologists, and motivate them financially through special compensation, in addition to establishing integrated regional and regional hospital centers, reviewing legislation, or enacting new laws that guarantee the dignity of patients Psychologists and their rights, and encourage their integration into society.
The network also called for reviewing the prices of medicines and health services, with the Ministry of Health and Social Protection to bear the cost of basic medicines, provide them for free for patients, and to launch national awareness campaigns aimed at fighting social stigma associated with mental illness, and encourages families to seek treatment.
On April 29, the Minister of Health and Social Protection, Amin Al -Tahrawi, affirmed that his ministry is working to generalize the interests of mental and mental health integrated in public hospitals, the development of external consulting units for psychiatry, and the establishment of teams to manage psychological and social crises, and enhance psychological and social rehabilitation services, within the framework of the multi -sectors national strategic plan for mental health 2030.
The Social, Economic and Environmental Council revealed on October 10, 2022, in a study on mental health, that 48.9% of Moroccans suffer or have previously tested mental or mental disorder in a period of time.
