12 mentally ill netted every day in Jakarta

12 mentally ill netted every day in Jakarta

JAKARTA (JP): The city authorities have netted an average of
12 people considered as "mentally depressed" on the capital's
streets everyday in the past three months, an official said on
Saturday.

The head of the city's rehabilitation agency for mentally ill
people, M. Sihombing, said the huge number of new arrivals had
turned the city's three rehabilitation centers into "something
like overloaded buses".

He added that most of those picked up were from cities in Java
and Sumatra.

They became normal again "after being treated at our
rehabilitation centers here for two weeks," he told The Jakarta
Post.

A senior employee at one of the city's rehabilitation centers
said that preliminary examinations of the new patients revealed
that they had become depressed after being unable to find jobs
here.

"They refused to return home because they'd promised to send
their families money soon after they got a job," Supranowo of
Panti Sosial Bina Laras Harapan Sentosa 02 rehabilitation center
in Cipayung, East Jakarta, said.

According to Supranowo, the three centers had so far succeeded
in returning some 150 patients to their respective families in
the same three-month period.

The centers, each with a capacity of 200 patients, are
currently home to 1,000 people, most of whom are suffering from
psychiatric illnesses.

Some of the people netted from the streets by the Public Order
officials and police were considered "dangerous to the public" as
they're always violent toward other people, Supranowo said.

He added many were drunkards and wife beaters.

A number of people with psychiatric problems have been beaten
to death by angry mobs in several parts of East and Central Java
recently. Unable to properly answer questions about their
identities, the victims were then accused of being members of the
unidentified group who has murdered clerics in the last few
months. They were then brutally murdered. (ylt)