Georgia’s first private psychiatric clinic a rare alternative
By Ana Datiashvili
Friday, April 18
The clinic uses modern treatment methods, is well-stocked with medicines and employs a number of specialists in different areas. One key aspect of the clinic, its founders say, is the open door policy the management operates.
“If a patient doesn’t want to stay here he can leave—so compulsion and limitation doesn’t exist here,” says Nino Okribelashvili, who set up the clinic last year.
Okribelashvili and her colleagues, all of whom previously worked at the state Asatiani medical center, say they had always hoped to some day open their own facility.
The dream started to become a reality when a Moscow-based Georgian businesswoman, Juna Demetrashvili, donated a building to the cause last year.
“That was great motivation for us,” acknowledges co-founder Gogi Naneishvili.
Intensive therapy performed by experienced staff in comfortable conditions helps offer patients the possibility of a quick recovery, clinic management says.
Ia Parulava a specialist in “Chekhov therapy” at the clinic said she has had a lot of positive feedback.
“I had one situation where a patient was attending treatment sessions with their mother, and later the mother thanked me and told me this was exactly that she had been looking for,” Parulava said.
Much like the rest of the healthcare system in Georgia, state psychiatric clinics suffer from under-funding and a lack of resources.
The number of registered mentally ill is around 80 000, according to a Health Ministry spokesperson, but there are collectively only 1300 beds in the country’s six clinics. The government spends GEL 18 per day on each mental patient admitted to hospital.
With already a number of success stories in Georgia to its name, the clinic is expecting future patients to come from farther afield.
“This is only clinic in the Caucasus, so soon we expect to get patients from Armenia and Azerbaijan,” co-founder Vajha Kenchadze says.