Article and photos by Tiago Ramírez Baquero on June 1, 2025
Alejandro Sapere, a psychologist at Bonaparte hospital during a demonstration for 200 people who were fired to return to their jobs.
In March, 200 workers were dismissed from the Laura Bonaparte Hospital as part of Milei’s drastic cuts to the country’s public budget. Mental health care has deteriorated, having dire effects on patients.
Psychologist María José Conforti finished her workday after 12 intense hours in mental health emergency services. It was a very long day because in the morning she had medical examinations, a requirement every year to be employed at the Laura Bonaparte Mental Health Hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Five minutes after the end of the workday, her employer, the Health Ministry, sent her a letter in her mailbox firing her. The dismissal came without prior notice and the message was “totally depersonalized.”
Conforti worked in the adolescent service and in immediate urgent care, and is one of a large group of 200 employees at the Laura Bonaparte Hospital in Buenos Aires who were laid off at a moment’s notice in March 2025. She is the product of the chainsaw of Javier Milei, the Argentine president who has pushed for drastic budget cuts. In October 2024 there were some signs of the layoffs, when the government said in an official statement that it would initiate a “restructuring plan” at Bonaparte Hospital. According to the government, the hospital has an average annual admission of 19 patients per day, and they considered this number very low for such a large hospital.
The Asociación de Trabajadores del Estado (ATE), one of the oldest trade union associations in Argentina, disapproves of Milei’s layoffs. “So far this year Bonaparte Hospital has provided care to more than 25,000 people,” said Amelia Rebori, a graduate in social work in the hospital’s pediatric division and member of the union, who also condemns the government’s layoffs. “The layoffs represent 47 percent of the total hospital staff. In the children’s area, 106 children were left overnight without comprehensive mental health treatment,” Rebori added.
Milei’s Attacks on Public Health
These layoffs are significant, as Argentina has had a strong law in force since 2013 protecting mental health services. The Comprehensive Mental Health Law, Law 26.657, requires the government to implement a comprehensive mental health system involving psychologists and psychiatrists to work together with music therapists, art therapy graduates, and social workers. There are several specific requirements for the whole country: the patient has the autonomy to decide about their treatment, such as deciding whether or not to use medication and whether to opt for alternative therapy. The law also mandates that hospitalization is only mandatory if the patient poses a risk to their social circle and community, a person cannot be excluded from employment due to their mental health condition, and voluntary hospitalization is the last option—in extreme cases, there is forced hospitalization. “This is because it is critical that patients not only work solely with psychologists, but with a variety of mental health professionals to heal and integrate into society. They fired all the social workers, they fired the occupational therapists, the music therapists,” said Rebori.
The government also tried to implement new terms to name mental disabilities in January, using terms such as “idiots” and “imbeciles” to name anyone with a mental disability.Milei’s government fails to comply with the Comprehensive Mental Health Law. The government also tried to implement new terms to name mental disabilities in January, using terms such as “idiots” and “imbeciles” to name anyone with a mental disability. However, in the face of the controversy on social media at a national level, they decided to backtrack. Although they retracted, it is clear that Milei plans to continue to take the country’s public health system down a dire path. Milei is emphatic about his “cultural battle”: all progressive and inclusive policies must come to an end.
Despite calling himself “liberal,” Milei is against legal abortion rights, transgender people, feminism, and a public health system, appropriating Donald Trump’s fight against the “woke agenda.” On X, Milei’s favorite social network, his army of supporters had a very telling answer about how the government understands public health from its neoliberal vision. One user posted in support of Milei’s layoffs, “Why do we need a social worker or a music therapist in a hospital?” and another user likened the hospital patients to pests.
According to a report by the Argentine Center for Political Economy, there are “very worrying” general cuts in health. There are entire programs paralyzed for lack of funds, with very drastic reductions. For example, medical care in poor and peripheral neighborhoods experienced a budget reduction of 96 percent, and the budget for care in response to HIV, sexually transmitted infections, viral hepatitis, tuberculosis, and leprosy has been reduced by 47 percent.
In addition to mental health workers, the hospital’s communication team was fired, and several workers and former employees believe that it is part of the government’s strategy in line with the drastic budgetary cuts: if there are no publications in social media networks regarding the recent layoffs, people will think that the hospital closed. The hospital’s Instagram, previously an active page and important channel to connect with patients and inform people of new developments, has gone dormant since January. Rebori believes that some patients stop coming to the hospital because they think it has closed for good.
Struggling Patients are Left Without Care
Santiago Gusinsky, a psychologist dismissed in March from the Laura Bonaparte Hospital, noticed that several young people who were arriving at the hospital were coming from very long treatments at other hospitals, which were also struggling with Milei’s budget cuts. “They were psychosis cases with acute symptoms resulting from the discontinuation of their treatments,” Gusinsky said. Gusinsky took on cases of young people with diagnoses of schizophrenia and paranoid schizophrenia in group spaces where art is important. “It was a challenge, in several ways. But it started to work,” he added. However, throughout that process, Gusinsky had to take on the extra responsibility of taking on extra patients left by colleagues of his who chose to resign weeks before being fired.
Milei not only fired hospital workers, but also promoted the closure of residencies for recent medical school graduates in hospitals from the government. In the Garrahan Hospital in Buenos Aires, they did not open vacancies for social work residency. Similarly, the Bonaparte Hospital was forced to close mental health residencies as a result of Milei’s assault on public health institutions. “There is a persecution of certain disciplines by this government, disciplines that are not hegemonic but are part of a comprehensive system that should bet on interdisciplinarity,” says Nora Lezana, a nutritionist at Garrahan.
“This government wants to do away with everything, as it also intends to dismantle the Bonaparte Hospital, which is close to the Garrahan Hospital, and we have fought together. We know that this problem is not only Garrahan’s, it is a policy on a national scale that is raised by Milei, they apply this adjustment on our backs,” said Alejandro Lipcovich, the general secretary of the Internal Board of the Bonaparte Hospital, at a press conference on May 10.
Dafne is a patient at the Laura Bonaparte hospital, posing for a portrait to symbolize the dissociation caused by the economic crisis and the possibility that her therapy will end.
“Mental health has its complexities and that is why we cannot approach it only from a vision where only psychology and psychiatry are important,” says María Eugenia Labate, a music therapist who did her residency at the Gutiérrez Hospital in Buenos Aires and was later in charge of the interdisciplinary residency in mental health at the Bonaparte Hospital. During that time, Labate and Conforti created the podcast La Nave for their patients as a way of doing group therapy with young people. “It was very interesting to see that it’s not just about coming to therapy and that’s it, but that we work with the patient within society, that is, the young people could help each other in a way that we would not have been able to if we only did individual therapy,” says Labate.
Fermín has lasted several weeks without appointments with his psychologist because she was fired from Bonaparte, but the hospital continued to give him his antidepressant medications.Fermín, a philosophy student at the University of Buenos Aires and patient at a hospital that experienced layoffs, smokes a cigarette and shows some of the scars he has made himself. “I’m not afraid of Milei, but all this becomes cyclical, another Peronist government returns and then another right-wing government will return,” he says. Fermín has lasted several weeks without appointments with his psychologist because she was fired from Bonaparte, but the hospital continued to give him his antidepressant medications. “A hospital cannot function as a drug outlet, that’s why we need professionals from different areas,” Fermín added.
Sofia Mariño, a psychologist formerly employed at the hospital, says that being a psychologist who has been left without a job not only affects her income but also her mental health. “I can’t do it alone, no one can. No, no, you can’t go through a situation of unemployment alone, you have to find support networks: friends, family.” She says that during the first weeks of the layoffs, she felt destroyed, but thanks to a psychologist, friends, and family, she began to cope better. Additionally, many former employees laid off from the hospital have stayed close in the fight for Bonaparte and the country’s public health system.
On March 12th, Gusinsky began to work on the issue of gaze with a group of young people, as some patients feel very paranoid about looking others in the eye. The group made paper masks together to confront this fear, but hours later, Gusinsky was informed that he was no longer working at the hospital. Now, the young people he worked with, who were previously without treatment, were again left without one.
The following Wednesday was Gusinsky’s last day with his patients. The group said their goodbyes and finished the masks. “Although now I think we’ll have to make the rest of the costume as well,” Gusinsky said. Soon, the government will begin to discuss an immigration reform that will limit the public health service to those who do not have Argentine identification cards. Although the hospitals are still open, many of their programs have been discontinued. “Tackling the consequences of the economic crisis from an office is a struggle against the impossible,” Gusinky says.
Tiago Ramírez Baquero is a Colombian freelance journalist and photographer currently living in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His work addresses issues such as social inequality and the economic crisis.
Source: NACLA