The predominant syndromes during the dictatorship were depression, suicide, emotional disorders, fears and phobias, said psychiatrist Hector Eyzaguirre Valderrama (70), who worked for 30 years at the Muñiz Hospital, and arrived in the city of Buenos Aires in 1974 clandestinely escaping from the Chilean dictatorship.
“In Argentina, during the time of the dictatorship, we cared for people who had been detained, people who had been tortured. They were all sent by human rights organizations, by the League (Argentina for Human Rights), by the Grandmothers and the Mothers (of Plaza de Mayo), by the CELS (Center for Legal and Social Studies)”, Eyzaguirre recalled to Télam.
The doctor finished his studies at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Buenos Aires in 1978, after having completed up to the third year in his hometown, Concepción, in Chile.
He is currently a psychiatrist and professor at the “Prof. Dr. Raúl Vaccarezza” Institute of Thysioneneumonology and has seven children.
“Our group was in high demand, both in hospitals and in centers that were set up for that, financed by ourselves or by the organizations,” he added. “We had an entire network of mental health care and containment.”
During the dictatorship the predominant syndromes were depression, suicide, emotional disorders, fears, phobias, he specified.
At the same time, Eyzaguirre and his group also worked with former combatants of the Malvinas War.
“When they arrived – from the Islands – they left them locked in some trains in the loading and unloading area of Retiro, and then they threw them out like dogs and they did not recognize them at all. There are more suicide deaths of those who were in the Malvinas than those who killed there are the English. Currently I have several people who were in the Malvinas and continue to have suffering, traumatic situations,” he added.
Likewise, the psychiatrist referred to his most recent experience in the pandemic: “Things were very hard in Muñiz,” he said and highlighted that there “there was an enormous sacrifice on the part of the health professionals who were not properly recognized.” no way by the City Government”.
Also, he emphasized “the consequences of the coronavirus”, especially in “psychiatric and biological disorders that people who have had coronavirus have.”
In that sense, he pointed out that there are people who never recovered their sense of smell or taste, people with heart disorders, depression, diabetes.
And he highlighted the mental health work that Axel Kicillof’s administration is doing in the Province of Buenos Aires.
Finally, he said that “Chile is a sick country” because “mental health practically does not exist there and, throughout the country, there are 17 child and adolescent psychiatrists.”
Meanwhile, regarding Argentina, he pointed out that “the issue of mental health has been deteriorating greatly, due to the combination of 8% of the world population suffering from psychiatric disorders, to which drugs have been added, an issue very serious and serious, because there is a relationship between drugs, politics, the police and judges,” he concluded.
Source: Ambito
