Of sound mind, but forced to live in mental hospital

For patients and their relatives, the word “discharge” will be music to their ears. Many insist on their release from the hospital even before they are fit. People or those recovering from illness prefer to be in their “sweet home”.  Now, even many doctors feel that the patients recover quickly at home because of the environs and they are less affected.

May be many in the Jharkhand State-owned Ranchi Institute of Neuro Psychiatry and Allied Sciences (RINPAS) would love to be with their loved ones. But they are not so fortunate. Some have been in the hospital for a few decades. The reasons might sound incredible but true. The hospital is not able to trace the relatives in some cases and in some instances, the family or loved ones are afraid to take their people home because of the stigma attached — discharged from a mental hospital.

Nearly a fifth of the people in the 500-bed hospital are not patients. Each one has a tale of her/his to tell. They lead the life of a virtually condemned prisoner.

Nagamma is around 50 and is normal in every sense and moves around the hospital, mingling with people. After spending nearly three decades in the hospital, she is not afraid of living with people with some mental illness. She has been waiting, waiting endlessly, to meet her people. The hospital authorities are also keen that she vacates the campus and joins her family members. They have been persistently writing letters to the address given by her relatives at the time of admission. But the letters evoke no response. The authorities do not know how to proceed because Nagamma from Andhra Pradesh has been in the hospital for too long.

The story of Madhuri from Ghazipur district of Uttar Pradesh is different. The frail-looking woman had slogged and sweated to bring up her children. When they became independent, they humiliated her and decided to dump her in the hospital stating that she was insane. Now, her children do not want her.

Laxmi Jaiswal racks her brain but cannot recollect her address. She is calm and composed and answers all questions without a fuss. She was hospitalised because she was suffering from schizophrenia, a common mental condition, and used to have bouts of hysteria attacks and some other minor mental disturbances in 1985. Within a couple of months, she was fit enough to be discharged. But the hospital had a problem. Her family was not willing to take her back.

The scene may be the same in other neuro sciences hospitals across the country. Experts and doctors feel that changes need to be incorporated to ensure that the relatives are in touch with the patients.

As the number of people being disowned by children and relatives grew, RINPAS started a full-fledged occupational therapy and rehabilitation unit. The idea was to
encourage relatives to take their loved ones and employ them gainfully. But the institution’s calculations went awry as the relatives hardly came forward to take the back
patients’ home.

As the part of the programme, the patients are being offered comprehensive
vocational training in carpentry, book-binding, tailoring, yarn-spinning and towel,
bedsheet and carpet weaving in the male section and stitching, embroidery, knitting, etc, in the female section. The patients are entitled to their monthly cash incentives on the basis of their work undertaken by them individually.

“The main idea behind giving incentives is to encourage and inculcate the habit of work in them,” says Pankaj Kumar, psychiatric social worker attached with RINPAS.

“Nearly 100 patients lodged in this institute have recovered and all that they need is the love, support and affection of their family members with little medical care for total mental health”, he says. Long stay with mentally ill people could have a devastating effect on them, he observes.

Why is there such overcrowding of long- standing patients in mental institution? Says a psychiatrist: “An individual with some mental illness is admitted to hospital after fulfiling the initial formalities. But the problems start after they recover. Their rehabilitation becomes a problem because the hospital administration is left with no residential address.”

There is another problem.  Dr A N Verma, associate professor attached with RINPAS, attributes the overstay cases to families fearing social stigma.  “There are patients who are the victims of rejection by our cruel society,” said Dr Verma.

“About 20 years ago, when I was with CIP (other mental hospital), a professor belonging to Ranchi University was admitted. When he was cured, we strived hard to reunite him with his family by providing all counselling to his family members. But they simply refused to accept him. The family members claimed that their image will take a beating if they took back the man,”he remarks.