Mentally ill patients roaming the streets of Riyadh is causing fears and concerns among residents of neighborhoods. Director of Medical Services in Al-Amal Complex, Dr. Riad Al-Namlah, confirmed to Al-Watan that the rate of such patients committing suicide in hospitals has reached 15 percent, and refused to be held accountable for external suicide cases. Al-Namlah expressed his dissatisfaction with families who admit their relatives in the Complex and then forget about them, leaving the hospital at a loss as to what to do with them upon their release. Al-Namlah admitted that there is an increase in the number of mental patients, pointing out that current campaigns in educating psychiatric patients or addicts are ineffective. The Director of Public Relations at Al Amal Complex for Mental Health, Hamad Bin Mushkhas, pointed out that a number of awareness campaigns failed because they displayed photos of people dead because of drug use. In a tour by Al-Watan in a number of neighborhoods reportedly harboring mental patients, a number of residents were interviewed. Omar Al-Sanea said, “I am afraid due to the presence of these psychiatric patients around in the neighborhood,” expressing his concern about what was happening and asking where the responsible parties of those patients were who may cause unplasant situations for others and endanger themselves through wandering in the streets in front of vehicles without any realization. “I met one of them after Juma'a prayer with his dirty clothes wandering in the street under the burning sun and I stopped a patrol car immediately and talked to the officers who revealed that they had dealt with him more than once and taken him to his family, but he has kept getting back to the street,” he said. Oweid Massoudi added that the number of mental patients in the streets and markets has increased; pointing out that it is difficult to distinguish mental patients from beggars because a lot of unscrupulous people are taking advantage of such situations gain people's sympathy. “It is unacceptable to blame the patients' families considering that they also fear that the patient's acts may result in disastrous consequences,” he said. Abdul Razzak Al-Ghamdi confirms that he knows a family, whose sufferings are just as equal as that of their mentally afflicted relative. Al-Ghamdi added that this family became frustrated and was afraid of him. “They took him to the Mental Health Hospital in the capital city, but the hospital refused to admit him under the pretext of having a large number of patients there and released him after giving some sedative.”
