Lisa Magnusson: Confidentiality has become a shield that authorities are hiding behind

once more she smiles through the thick darkness of sedative medications, and it is when she gets to know that her mother talked about that she had good grades in school. Otherwise appears Elin in Wednesday's ”uppdrag granskning”, which is indifferent. The foot twitches. On the white board on the wall, she scribbled a quote by the band Kent: ”I don't want to be alone. But who wants to be alone?” The continuation of the song reads: ”this is no nightmare, there is no phase.” No, it is psykakuten. And here she lived for almost three years.

the Program is a follow-up to the famous story, if True, was mentally ill and therefore not received help from drug treatment professionals, and who had substance abuse problems and, therefore, not received help from the mental health services. That were sent back and forth between the different institutions, in a breakneck speed, all denied her, threw sometimes her out on the street. She was never quiet to begin their recovery. Instead she became worse.

since Then, True has finally got a place on a drug rehabilitation center. By the nyfrälste musician Sebastian Stakset, and his evangelist, she has – who are not believers – also got a support person, and thus just the one where the safe point that today's fragmentation of care can not provide. But the basic problem consists: So many fall between the cracks.

namely, that there is still not a single instance to take on enough responsibility for changing this unbearable, degrading situation.

So the law says: the Confidentiality is not absolute. It can be broken, if the patient himself wants it.

This is a system failure, and the minister of social affairs Lena Hallengren (S) get any invisible stuff in the eye that she has to poke away just as she gets the question about what she intended to do. Then she says that an investigation is underway, which is almost completely true: the human services committee has just taken a step in that direction. But even more true is that the government at the same time, reduces the appropriations for the mental health services with sek 90 million.

over the practical decisions confronted the answer is the same as always in this context.

How is it that Elin has not got the accommodation that first determined, but rather a worse, cheaper version that fits poorly for those who need lots of support? What is she doing now, locked away in psykakuten year after year, when this is a chaotic place that would make anyone feel bad, and where the patients according to the rules just stay in the max a few weeks? Why psychiatry has not even examined the data that she suffered sexual abuse by health professionals?

Alas, says the responsible, we cannot comment on the individual case.

journalism, to all the scrutiny so often crashes right there. The system is made visible through the individual examples, but the confidentiality is like a concrete wall – sometimes it appears to be clean of as a shield. For the secrecy is to protect the individual, not the power. And so says the law: Confidentiality is not absolute. It can be broken, if the patient himself wants it.

Still held just the secrecy verging on the routine up when the authorities face a journalist. The issue of sexual abuse is a good example of it.

want this coming up on the table. She has already talked with ”Mission Review”, and also given the reporter the authority to read all the records. The doctor who treated her at the relevant time have been interviewed and then told that the data is of course carried further, to the top management, a lawyer was with. When you want to, of course – just as the patient and her doctor – to know why it is still not done anything until now, when journalists begin to rummage in the matter?

But the highest responsible escapes in behind the standard reply that it is not possible to comment on the individual case, despite the fact that the confidential information already is disclosed. The only thing he has to address is the question of how the business works, why nothing has been done.

to comment on the individual case are thus carelessly – it can he given. And it would be a relief if he and more also wanted to do it. For not until the people responsible actually takes responsibility, can real change take place.