Complex rehabilitation centre of PH Horní Beřkovice

PRESS INFORMATION

The psychiatric hospital of Horní Beřkovice (PH Horní Beřkovice) has obtained a financial grant of CZK 20.819.125,-- CZK to build the Complex Rehabilitation Centre of PH Horní Beřkovice. The funds will be provided from the Norway Grants Financial Mechanism administered in the Czech Republic by the Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic. Grant No. NF-CZ11-OV-2-028-2015 was awarded based on a well-prepared plan to establish the methods of integrated psychiatric rehabilitation.

In 2014, the Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic as an intermediary authority issued a call for grant applications. The Norway Grants prepared a number of subjects for the Czech Republic, which were not supported through European Union grants. The programme C11, Public Health Initiatives, was focused on the improvement of psychiatric care services. The grant was designed to improve healthcare in the fields that are underfinanced in the long term and whose development is below the level of advanced EU and EEA countries. Together with the project partners, i.e. organizations engaged in the development of non-state social services, PH Horní Beřkovice has prepared a complex rehabilitation programme that includes both hospital treatment as well as social after-care. The following FOKUS association organizations have become partners of the project: Fokus Labe, Fokus Liberec, and Fokus Praha-Mělník.

Project objectives are:

• to enhance the quality and efficiency of therapeutic processes in order to shorten the duration of hospitalization of psychiatric patients;
• to increase the effectiveness of the therapeutic process, destigmatize and transform the psychiatric care.

The project plan of PH Horní Beřkovice was designed as an elimination of a weak point of health and social care of persons with disabilities. The Complex Rehabilitation Centre of PH Horní Beřkovice will be designed particularly for patients with a serious mental illness (SMI). These are clients hospitalized in the long term who have a diagnosed psychiatric mental illness such as mental disorders due to psychoactive substance use, schizophrenia, affective disorders, neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorders and personality and behavioural disorders.

The aim of psychiatric rehabilitation in the conditions of PH Horní Beřkovice is to help persons with psychiatric conditions to enhance their ability of functioning in order to be successful and contented in the environment they have chosen to live in, with the minimum possible level of permanent professional support. A successful purpose of complex rehabilitation is to enable patients with a serious mental illness to become better integrated in the society outside the psychiatric hospital.

Creation of conditions for the development and implementation of a complex rehabilitation care programme is a prerequisite for initiating the integrated rehabilitation programme. The psychiatric rehabilitation programme is currently restricted in terms of space given that PH Horní Beřkovice does not have an available technical background. A number of activities are implemented to a limited extent.

As envisaged by the project plan, the Complex Rehabilitation Centre of PH Horní Beřkovice will be designed as an independent department with related places of work, operated on the community principle. Both training sites will be newly built and their construction will be supported by funds from the Norway Grants.

Investment in new infrastructure for complex rehabilitation

• Training centre of psychosocial skills – SO1 – Monastery
• Training centre of manual skills and art therapy – SO2 – Coal storage

SO1 – Monastery; Training centre of psychosocial skills
The Training centre of manual skills will be created through the reconstruction of Object O, a former coal storage area, converting it into a two-floor rehabilitation site.

Newly created will be ergotherapeutic workshops and places of work:

1. Gym
2. Workshops comprising 8 independent areas

Workshop A – ceramic and basket-making techniques
Workshop B – processing of polymeric materials, wax and soap-making workshop
Workshop D – production of paper, jewellery, graphics and varnishing
Workshop C – Processing of textiles, craft techniques, work with silk

SO2 – Coal storage; Training centre of manual skills and art therapy
The training centre of social skills will be created through the reconstruction of the second floor above ground of Object B, a former monastery within the psychiatric hospital premises. New places of work are connected to rooms used in after-care for interactive contacts between clients and non-profit after-care organizations. Newly created will be the following places of work:

1. Training laundry room
2. Training kitchenette
3. Therapeutic area for individual consultations, meeting room, 5 places of work
4. Area for community meetings – therapy
5. Room for PC training of cognitive functions

Rehabilitation Planning Group
In the process of preparing the infrastructure, a structured programme was also prepared in cooperation with regional FOKUS association project partners for the needs of the clients; the programme is focused on occupational diagnosis, training of skills, and therapeutic training aimed at overcoming crisis situations.

In April 2014, PH Horní Beřkovice and Fokus Labe, Fokus Liberec and Fokus Praha-Mělník established the Rehabilitation Planning Group; this group has already been preparing the methods for joint work so that an integrated rehabilitation programme can be initiated when the construction is finished in April 2016.

The concept of building the rehabilitation centre is based on personal experience of physicians, psychologists and healthcare providers with these patients at the hospital, and on limited possibilities of their integration outside the hospital in the catchment area of the Ústí nad Labem, Central Bohemian, and Liberec Regions. The project actively responds to new findings in the fields of psychotherapy and after-care provided by non-state organizations in the area of social integration.
The project is intended to help target patient groups to access good-quality healthcare and to become reintegrated in civil life, and to improve the prevention of subsequent health and healthcare related complications.

The programme of the Complex Rehabilitation Centre is divided in 4 basic phases, which are chronological, but which also alternate in cycles:

1. Diagnostic and motivation phase
2. Planning phase
3. Rehabilitation phase
4. Evaluation phase

Activities are focused particularly on three consecutive phases of the recovery process, stabilization, and especially reorientation and reintegration. The number of rehabilitations is anticipated according to the needs of individual clients based on checking the progress achieved by them. The complex rehabilitation programme lasts for 3 to 12 months according to the determined progress of the clients. Any group has 3 to 8 clients. Also scheduled are client visits at specialized places of work of Fokus Labe, Fokus Liberec and Fokus Praha-Mělník partners, so that after the hospitalization, the clients be able to engage in subsequent social integration.

Principal therapeutic goals of the integrated rehabilitation method:

• to minimize or stabilize the symptoms of the disease
• to prevent re-hospitalization
• to support the ability of independent functioning
• to support the ability to work and study

Horní Beřkovice, 26 May 2015

Contact information: PhDr. Robert Terrich
Contact person: David Vačilja
Organized by: Psychiatric Hospital of Horní Beřkovice
Telephone numbers: Mobile: 731 655 577; Tel.: 416 808 259
e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.;This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 
www: www.pnhberkovice.cz