National health network improving

A very serious incident could have been avoided if the authorities had not denied treatment to a young man when psychiatrists said he needed it.

This is the view of Jógvan Páll Lassen, the defence lawyer for a 22-year-old man, who last week was sentenced to indefinite placement at a mental institution in the so-called ‘axe assault’ case.

The young man was diagnosed with a mental illness in 2011, but he has not received any help, even though Faroese psychiatrists had booked him a treatment place in Denmark at the time, said Lassen.

The head of the Public Health Authority, Edvard Heen, declines to comment on individual cases, but he says that cases like this one often end up involving more than one authority, which can present additional challenges.

“But the various authorities have become much better in recent years at working together,” he adds.

Translated by prosa.fo