Malta’s Child Mental Health Scandal: Academic Demands Public Inquiry as Kids Turned Away from Overcrowded Unit

**Academic Demands Answers After Child Mental Health Unit ‘Fails Malta’s Most Vulnerable’**

A leading Maltese psychologist has broken ranks to demand a full public inquiry into “systemic failures” at the country’s only in-patient child and adolescent mental health unit, warning that children as young as nine are being restrained, sedated and discharged prematurely because beds are “permanently full”.

Dr. Daniela Falzon, senior lecturer at the University of Malta and a former clinician at Mount Carmel Hospital’s under-18 ward, told *Hot Malta* that the island’s “culture of silence” around mental health is literally costing lives.
“We have become experts at fireworks, feasts and GDP growth, yet we cannot keep a single 12-year-old safe from self-harm inside a state facility,” Falzon said. “This is not a resource gap—it is a moral gap.”

The unit, a six-bed annex hidden behind the baroque walls of the 19th-century asylum in Attard, was meant to be a temporary solution when it opened in 2017. Six years on, it remains Malta’s only 24/7 psychiatric refuge for under-18s, despite a 63 % surge in emergency referrals since the pandemic, internal figures show. Last month alone, 11 children were turned away, two of whom later attempted suicide, according to hospital logs leaked to *Hot Malta*.

Parents describe “nightmare” negotiations with A&E staff who, bound by protocol, must shuttle suicidal minors back home if no bed is free. One Sliema mother recalled wrapping her 13-year-old son’s wrists with dish-cloths at 3 a.m. after being told “come back tomorrow”.
“We live 400 metres from the yacht marina where billionaires dock, yet I had to choose between tying my child’s wounds or driving him to Sicily,” she said, asking not to be named for fear of social backlash. In Malta’s tight-knit parishes, mental illness still carries the whiff of “ħassra” – family shame.

Falzon’s call for an inquiry is backed by the Malta Psychology Association and the Church’s Caritas agency, but so far snubbed by Health Minister Jo Etienne Abela, who insists “additional resources” were allocated in the last budget. Critics point out that the €2.5 million pledged has not yet translated into a single new bed. Meanwhile, the unit lost three senior psychiatrists to the private sector this year, lured by salaries triple the €42,000 state ceiling.

The timing is politically awkward. Malta is riding high as Europe’s fastest-growing economy, courting digital-nomad euros and blockbuster film productions. Valletta’s new €300 million cruise-liner terminal opens in July; a state-of-the-art IVF wing for medical tourists was inaugurated last week. “We can subsidise foreign investors with tax breaks, but we cannot subsidise a child’s right to breathe without wanting to die,” Falzon told a packed University lecture hall on Tuesday, earning a standing ovation from students who increasingly volunteer for suicide-prevention NGOs.

Community fallout is already visible. State schools report a 40 % spike in self-referrals to guidance counsellors, while pastoral workers in Gozo say they are “overwhelmed” by parents asking priests to perform “deliverance” rituals on depressed teens rather than seek clinical help.
“Malta still equates psychiatric care with ‘Ta’ Pisani’ – the old asylum nickname that terrified our grandparents,” explains Fr. Jimmy Xerri, who runs youth camps. “Until we rename and reframe, families will keep hiding sick kids behind closed shutters.”

Opposition MP and psychiatrist Stephen Spiteri has tabled a parliamentary motion for a joint-health select committee, but government whips signal they will block debate until after the summer recess. In response, activists are planning a “silent feast” on 15 July—marching from University to Castille wearing the bright *fjakkoli* lanterns normally carried during village feasts, this time extinguished to symbolise “extinguished childhoods”.

Falzon, meanwhile, is collecting testimonies from former patients for a citizen’s dossier. “We need Maltese voices, not imported policies,” she says. “Our children are not statistics—they are the same kids who build *ħobż biż-żejt* stalls at school, who win *festa* singing competitions. If we cannot protect them, what exactly are we celebrating?”

As the island prepares for its usual August firework spectaculars, the question lingers: will anyone light a fuse under the government before another preventable tragedy occurs?