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. ------------------------------
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."