Closing the asylums slipped from 2025 to 2029

What it is

Law 19.529, passed in 2017, ordered the asylum model replaced by community services —care centres, supported housing and psychosocial rehabilitation— and set that the closure of asylum establishments and single-purpose psychiatric structures could not run past 2025. In June 2021 ASSE's then president, Leonardo Cipriani, said it was impossible to close the Bernardo Etchepare and Santín Carlos Rossi colonies —now grouped under the name Ceremos and run by ASSE— by that date, because many residents are not able to live independently. According to El Observador, the Health Ministry replied by instructing its Mental Health area to secure “full compliance with the terms set out in Law 19.529” and to finish drafting its regulations.

What is questioned

The deadline passed and the facilities did not close. The current text published by IMPO now says the Executive will set the closure schedule for asylum establishments and single-purpose structures by regulation, “and compliance may not exceed the year 2029”. According to Subrayado (24 March 2026), the government changed that deadline in the five-year budget —Law 20.446, enacted on 16 December 2025— and Director General of Health Fernanda Nozar defended the move: “we do not have adequate services for reintegration; it would be irresponsible” to close without alternatives in place. On 4 March 2026 la diaria reported that the national human rights institution (INDDHH) warned of “substantive changes” to the Mental Health Act regarding the creation and closure of asylum centres, introduced alongside the budget's approval; article 38 of the law bans “the creation of new asylum and single-purpose establishments, public and private, from the entry into force of this law”. In October 2025 the 14th March for Mental Health, Deinstitutionalisation and a Dignified Life had demanded “a clear closure timetable” and a budget.

Why it matters to you

Every year of extension is another year of people living inside facilities the State itself defined as incompatible with the model the law mandates. It also decides where the money goes: propping up wards, or building homes, supported housing and community teams. With no regulated timetable and no earmarked funds, spending keeps flowing to the model the law ordered dismantled.

Where it stands