Giving care to the mentally ill

Giving care to the mentally ill

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Oct. 10 is World Mental Health Day, with more than 400
million people worldwide suffering from mental and neurological
disorders, a large proportion of them in Southeast Asian
countries. Despite the fact that five of the 10 most disabling
disorders in the world are psychiatric in nature, the mentally
ill continue to be isolated or ostracized from society.
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Santi W.E. Soekanto, Contributor/Depok

One woman wept as she recounted in a recent workshop on mental
illness in Jakarta how her depressed husband was maltreated when
he was brought to the hospital.

"They injected him and tied him down. No doctors checked him
then. He tried to ask for a drink, but was ignored."

Somehow, the man, an artist, recovered and maintained a
"normal" existence for two years, before he again fell into the
pit of despair that engulfs people with depression. When he was
yet again placed in a mental institution, the nurses made him
clean the toilet.

In many parts of the world, significant scientific advances
have been made to treat mental illness, but many people,
especially in developing countries such as Indonesia, are still
deprived of proper treatment.

Poor treatment, even downright abuse, is often their fate.

In some rural settings, the mentally ill are often
incarcerated or isolated, such as the recent case of a man in
Central Sulawesi who was kept in shackles by his family for a
year before he broke free and killed four people. He was then
beaten to death by locals.

Or else, they are neglected, left to disappear or wander
around uncared for.

And the stigmatization and discrimination against the mentally
ill often extends to their family.

Leading daily Kompas recently quoted Sasanto Wibisono, a
professor of psychiatry at the University of Indonesia, as saying
that people with mental disorders often faced disadvantages
socially, legally and in other terms. A law on mental health is
needed to ensure professional health care for the mentally ill
and protect their rights.

Dr. Vijay Chandra, a New Delhi-based expert on mental health,
told The Jakarta Post here recently there is a need to shift from
hospital-based psychiatry to community-based mental health
programs. Communities need to be educated about mental and
neurological illnesses to remove the numerous myths and
misconceptions.

Indeed, one of the difficulties in helping the mentally ill is
the veil of myths surrounding the nature of the illness,
especially the widespread thinking in Indonesia that depression
is caused by possession and that a mental disorder is a curse.

Jusni Solichin of the Ministry of Health concurred.

"Families, members of a community, traditional healers and
many others need to be educated that some mental illnesses are
treatable, that they are not a curse, and that there are
accessible health care professionals and facilities for them,"
Jusni said.

"Whatever services are available in the neuro-sciences only
reach the metropolitan and medium sized towns," Dr. Chandra said.

"Small towns, villages and marginalized populations have no
services, and people sometimes do not even know that they are
suffering from a treatable illness.

"It is imperative that we reach out to people and the basic
minimum services are extended to all the people."