Blind Spot: The angle at which a mirror cannot reflect an object at a certain location.
A metaphorical term for an area not of interest or influence.
Some words are used too habitually, too conventionally, and we forget their original meaning.
Just like a chuim bird.
In the media, 'blind spot' is often used as such.
This is because, in general, it seems plausible if you use this word as an imputation report, regardless of the policy's blind spots, the socially underprivileged, or the underprivileged.
It was because of two informative photos that arrived recently that made me ponder the meaning of this word once again.
Trash piled up everywhere in the house, an old woman and a young son sitting in the middle of the garbage.
“A poor mother and child with intellectual disabilities live in a rented room in the basement of a multi-family house in Incheon. The son’s symptoms of mental illness are getting worse and the elderly mother is at risk, but there is no separation of mother and child.”
As soon as I saw the report, I remembered the blind spot in the welfare system and headed to the scene.
Neither private hospitals, nor university hospitals, nor public hospitals "cannot accept"
According to the neighbors and the district office, the mother and child in their 60s and the son in their 30s, who are recipients of basic livelihood, started living in a rented room in the basement of a multi-family house in Incheon four years ago. A neighbor said, "At the time, mothers and children were poor and in difficult circumstances, but they still looked like ordinary families who depended on each other." The situation worsened, he said, early this year, when he stopped taking his son's psychiatric medication and suddenly developed violent tendencies. A neighbor who could not see the old woman receiving her son's shouting and swearing, decided to report it.
If the son is not properly treated, the situation can be dangerous for the elderly as well as himself. Why did the district office and public health center keep their hands on each other? But when I researched it, it wasn't that I didn't know. No matter how much I searched, there was not a single hospital that accepted my son.
The local public health center said that it has been working hard to hospitalize her son since the beginning of this year. He said that he had been inquiring for several months at hospitals that could hospitalize not only Incheon city mental hospitals, Incheon Medical Center, university hospitals, but also public hospitals and university hospitals in Seoul and the metropolitan area, but he could not find a hospital that accepted this son. Why?
① First of all, private psychiatric hospitals did not have closed wards that could accommodate severely mentally ill people, so if there were beds, only conditional admission was possible, requiring that a caregiver be brought to care for a seriously ill son. The cost of nursing care was unkind to the mother and child.
② University hospitals also said that there were no beds. In addition, the fact that university hospitals are reluctant to receive basic livelihood assistance patients, called 'protection type 1', because they do not generate profits when hospitalized according to the current system, he said. It takes a lot of work, but money is not enough, so even if there are hospital beds, there are many cases where they do not receive them for various reasons.
③ As compulsory hospitalization for mentally ill people became stricter, it became difficult to find a place to be hospitalized even for patients who needed urgent hospitalization. If a mental emergency is confirmed by the police and medical staff, there are three hospitals that can provide emergency hospitalization 24 hours a day, but they refused because they did not want to treat his son's diabetes and leg injuries together.
④ Public hospitals are the places where people with nowhere to go are usually received. The purpose is to provide health care services to the medically underprivileged first, without worrying about profits. The hands and feet of such public hospitals were all tied up with Corona. 52 out of 55 public hospitals across the country have been designated as corona-only hospitals, but there was no room for the medically vulnerable because the staff and beds were tight just to respond to the corona virus.
A person in charge
of the public
health center said,
"Currently, there is only Incheon Medical Center as a national public hospital in Incheon, but I received an opinion that the Incheon Medical Center could not open general beds because it only accepts corona patients. I also inquired with the Ministry of Health and Welfare, , and Seoul hospitals, but other places say it's unclear whether the doctor's (hospitalization) order will drop for the same reason."
In addition, the administrative admission procedure, which allows the head of a local government to request a person with severe mental illness to be admitted to a designated psychiatric hospital, was also useless because there was no bed in the hospital.
There is a shortage of beds for people with severe mental illness, and the Corona situation overlaps, so there is no hospital to receive a sick son.
During the interview, the son was fortunately admitted to a nursing hospital, but it was ironic that his mother was hospitalized because of an injury that allowed him to go to the hospital.
When his son was left alone for a few days without a guardian, he almost went to town at the public health center, so he temporarily sent his son to a nearby nursing hospital.
It is said that the cost of nursing care that will be incurred will be supported by the district office first.
But only one month.
After that, you have to come back home.
Then, what happens to your son?
What will happen to the mother who has to take care of her son alone?
"There is no hospital, so the medically vulnerable people who die lying down"
Even now, public health centers, district offices, and related organizations hold meetings and put their heads together, but there is no point. I have no choice but to wait for the hospital to get sick somewhere, to receive my son. It was frustrating, but the more I covered it, the more I couldn't stand it. As initially thought naively, the media could not intervene and find any solution, and it was difficult to draw a simple conclusion that "the public hospital was tied up as a hospital dedicated to Corona, and the medically vulnerable had nowhere to go." It was only clear that the welfare system for the most vulnerable groups in society was not working properly.
To sum up the words of the psychiatrists, “It is true that the situation has gotten worse due to the corona, but the severely mentally ill from the vulnerable class have always been reluctant to receive them at private hospitals, and public hospitals and manpower to take responsibility for them have always been, many, and few. It's not a thing."
The discussion on alternatives was very sharply entangled with issues that were difficult to cover in the reports, such as the number and role of public hospitals, the issue of preparation for the strengthening of admission requirements for mentally ill patients and the flow of deinstitutionalization, and the medical welfare system such as fees.
It was a complex intertwining of various circumstances and issues that made it difficult to come up with a clear alternative, like breaking the Gordian knot.
During the interview, I heard from a medical worker that "'Incheon Mother and Child' had a nursing hospital where they could be hospitalized due to the high level of disability, but the medically disadvantaged class in the province literally has no hospital to go to, so they die on the spot."
There are too many sad cases like 'Incheon Hat', but people don't know about it because it's not noticeable.
I realized the meaning of the word 'blind spot', which I used as a habit.
It was a pity that I couldn't come up with a cool alternative.
The story of 'Incheon Hat' has not yet been resolved.
It was about the same extent that the district office requested the volunteer center the day after the report and said that it was planning to clean the house of the mother and child this week.
However, I will continue to play a role in elevating these stories to 'places visible to the eye'.
My son will be back soon.
Let's keep watching.
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