Dr. Pedro Seijo Ceballos. Psychiatrist. Director of the Clinic Treatment Centre for Addictions in Villamartín. Cádiz Provincial Council. Consultant Psychiatrist in Penitentiary Centre of Seville 1 and 2. Spain.

Dr. Seijo, from his experience in different prisons through his career, presented the problems that drug addicts who are held in prisons have, which include several psychiatric pathologies. He started his lecture declaring that “drugs do create addiction” and its consumption, which seemed to be related with young people back in the time, is now an issue that affects all ages. He keeps working with these people because there exists an addiction to this for people who face drug-related issues: sincerity, warmth and empathy in order to keep developing their work with quality and excellence.

Freedom is lost when you become a drug addict and for his area of work this is not a metaphor: his patients are imprisoned. There is a large community of drug addicts in prisons, this is an international fact, and thus it should be a serious public concern since a lot of them are mentally ill or are imprisoned for drug-related crimes. In Spain 92% of convicts drug addicts are men, while only 7,6% are women. Years ago the situations were related with withdrawal, but now these situations are more related with money, unemployment, stress, less training, relationships, chances and a lot more of illnesses. There is a large community who have instability in all their acts and behaviours due to drugs.

In order for the treatment to be successful collective work is needed: physician, nurses, social workers, psychologists and also teams from the public administration. It is necessary to be specialised in this kind of treatment. A large amount of prisoners have been in treatment inside in order to stop their addiction with detoxification, abstinence maintaining, therapy and social reintegration. But many of them relapse. No treatment is applicable to everyone and therefore work is hard and there are a lot of challenges.

Thanks to his contribution we now know what is done and some of what has to be done. He pointed out that this is a complicated field of work but it “is addictive” for workers. He ended his lecture encouraging our students to specialise in order to face the challenge of giving tools and strategies to avoid drug consumption and everyone’s life to move forward.

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