Bickering over missing psychiatric patient

The family of missing Pretoria psychiatric patient Shane Jordaan are dismayed by claims that he had not been visited for at least seven years, vowing to prove the most recent visit was in March last year.

This week The Citizen reported that the Gauteng provincial health department was told by the non-governmental organisation (NGO) that runs Kairos Centre, the state psychiatric centre in Cullinan, Jordaan was missing his parents.

Kairos Centre is run by an NGO but funded by the Gauteng health department and licensed to provide services to 125 mental healthcare patients with severe psychiatric disabilities.

According to the health department, the NGO management reported that Jordaan, 30, had spoken about his parents frequently before his disappearance and that the centre had tried countless times to reach his parents with no success.

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The missing patient’s sister, Christan, said they visited her younger brother every year and took pictures.

She shared a picture of her father posing with Shane at the centre in 2019, insisting that the last time the family saw her brother was just before the 2020 March hard Covid-19 lockdown.

“Kairos has never had a signing in or signing out (register) book. I have his medication administration schedule dated May 2021 to show that we have been involved. We have a photo of (Shane) with my dad in 2019. We take a picture every time we visit him,” Christan said.

But centre manager Susan van Niekerk, who said she had cared for Shane for 11 years, had a different story to tell , that his parents only visited him once in 2015 and again in 2018.

“It is here in our visitors’ register that the family claim we do not have…here we care for the most violent, mentally retarded people. Their families cannot cope with their violence and basic needs but us who clean up end up getting victimised…it is sad,” she said.

Van Niekerk said the facility received a call from the Weskoppies Psychiatric Hospital in Pretoria West where Jordaan’s brother, Ruan, was admitted, complaining he had not been visited.

“They said to us, ‘can we transfer him to your facility because his parents are not visiting him and he misses them, which affects him terribly in his mind’. I expressed the same sentiments to (Weskoppies),” she said.

The DA has alleged that Jordaan’s disappearance exposed several problems at the centre, including lack of monitoring whether patients were taking medication, filthy rooms and leaking raw sewage.

The Citizen this week reported Jordaan’s family were beginning to lose hope of finding him, conjuring up memories of the Life Esidimeni tragedy in which 144 patients died.

While there is bickering about whether the family visited him regularly or not, Jordaan remains missing.

siphom@citizen.co.za