The plight of a young 20-year-old man with autism who has been tied to a bed for the past 8 months in the Psychiatric clinic of Dromokaiteio in Attica, highlights the total incompetence of the Greek health authorities.
Even after protothema.gr shed light on the story two months ago, and the Greek authorities had decided to transfer the man to a special boarding school in Corinth for autistic children, nothing has been done and the youth continues to suffer strapped to a bed in a ward at the psychiatric hospital.
The unfortunate man has been caught up in a war of blame between state and NGO structures for autism.
The mother of the young man says her son is living under horrendous conditions “My child is not being fed, his life is in danger. In the clinic that he is being hospitalised there are drug addicts and criminals. I have stayed five months with him sleeping in a mattress next to my son and I have seen them with my own eyes. What I am saying was confirmed by the doctor and the director of Dromokaitios before the prosecutor, where we went a month ago. My son has self-destructive tendencies. They beat him, they yell at him, the other patients spit on him, and of course, they are not responsible for it”.
Vasilis was taken to a boarding school specialising in treatment for autism at the age of 15. When the facility closed down, he was transferred to a second special boarding school for autistics in Agia Paraskevi. After suffering an acute nervous crisis, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital for treatment, and since then, all the doors of the structures specialising in hosting people with autism refuse to take him in, declaring they are incapable of accommodating his case.
