Morocco’s King Mohammed VI oversaw on Wednesday the inauguration of the Psychosocial Rehabilitation Center at Casablanca’s Ibn Rochd University Hospital.
The project, carried out by Mohammed V Foundation for Solidarity, illustrates the special interest King Mohammed grants to the promotion of the health sector in Morocco.
The King took the opportunity to visit various departments of the center, whose mission is to care for patients with mental disabilities caused by serious and chronic mental illnesses, with a view to reducing the deleterious effects of their disability and promoting their social and professional reintegration.
The project, which required an investment of around 10.5 million dirhams (more than $1 million), is part of an action plan led by the Mohammed V Solidarity Foundation to support the kingdom's medical sector and improve access to care for the most deprived populations.
Located near the Ibn Rochd University Psychiatric Center, the 2,100-square-meter facility boasts therapeutic services, such as psychology, psychiatry, occupational therapy, and functional evaluation rooms.
It boasts a multipurpose room and workshops for cooking therapy, plastic arts, pottery, hairdressing-aesthetics, and computers.
The workshops aim to help patients become aware of their emotions, improve their ability to concentrate, stimulate their imagination and creativity, regain self-confidence, participate in their social and professional integration, identify possible blocks that were previously unidentified, and provide them with a group experience that promotes communication.
The new center allows the patients, estimated at more than 1,300 per year, to break the isolation caused by their mental pathology, as well as to develop their relational abilities, acquire certain professional skills and improve their sense of well-being.
In order to fulfill its mission, the Psychosocial Rehabilitation Center of the Ibn Rochd University Hospital has five medical specialists (three psychiatrists and two neuropsychologists), seven mental health nurses, and a support staff of seven trainers in hairdressing, computer science, cooking, sports, theater, pottery, and art therapy.
The project is part of many medical and social initiatives carried out by the Foundation and aimed at reinforcing the mapping of the health care in Casablanca.
