Human Rights Watch (HRW) has found that women forcibly admitted in government institutions like mental hospitals suffer grave abuses. It has prepared a report on the issue after visiting 24 mental hospitals, general hospitals with beds for psychiatric treatment, rehabilitation centres and residential care facilities in Pune, Mumbai and Thane, including Thane Mental Hospital.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has found that women forcibly admitted in government institutions like mental hospitals suffer grave abuses. It has prepared a report on the issue after visiting 24 mental hospitals, general hospitals with beds for psychiatric treatment, rehabilitation centres and residential care facilities in Pune, Mumbai and Thane, including Thane Mental Hospital.
The research was carried out from 2012 December to 2014 November. The report is based on more than 200 interviews with women/girls with psychosocial or intellectual disabilities, their families, caretakers, mental health professionals, service providers, government officials and the police.
Kriti Sharma, a researcher in Disability Rights division of Human Rights Watch, who visited these hospitals, said: "Their families and police dump women/girls with disabilities in institutions partly because government has failed to provide them appropriate support and services. Once these people are locked up, they are doomed to isolation, abuse and fear, with no hope of escape."
Researcher have found women/girls being involuntary admitted and detained arbitrarily in mental hospitals and residential care institutions across India. Such women/girls are dumped in overcrowded, unhygienic places where there is inadequate access to general healthcare, and where treatment, including electroconvulsive therapy, is forced on them. They are also subjected to physical, verbal and sexual violence.
Hospital authorities are aware of the problems, but are unable to solve them because, not all in the society accept a mentally ill person back even after s/he's pronounced fine.
Dr Rajendra Shirsath, superintendent, Thane Mental Hospital, which has a 1,857-bed facility, explained: "Mental hospitals are a dumping grounds for families trying to get rid of relatives with psychosocial disabilities."
It was also found that many of the institutions do not provide these women appropriate reproductive health care, access to HIV/AIDS testing, etc.
Kirti Sharma who interacted with hospital staff at various levels, said: "Ward boys in many hospitals are not taught how to deal with such patients; in many cases they are fed medicines forcefully. Not only this, patients who fear electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) were asked to do what they didn't want to.
Vidya, one such patient who is now leading a normal life, went through a tough regime. Her testimony to Kirti says: "I never used to take medicines. After being hospitalized, I was sedated. Four times a day, they would put tablets in my hand. The nurse was very rude. She would say: 'It's compulsory; 'Take it fast.' There was no time to think, I remained sleepy all the time. The side effects were terrible—my hands started trembling, I couldn't stretch them, I couldn't walk, I was very slow, my tongue started trembling and stuttering."
Among the 128 cases of institutional abuses that Human Rights Watch documented, none of the women/girls involved had successfully filed a First Information Report (FIR) or accessed redress mechanisms for being institutionalized against their will or for facing abuse within an institution. Most of them weren't even aware that there were redress mechanisms.
Human Rights Watch now wants "the central government to immediately order an evaluation and take steps to end abusive practices and inhumane conditions in mental hospitals, state and NGO-run residential care institutions, by effectively monitoring them."
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