The Union health ministry has directed the state mental authority to rehabilitate about 550-600 people who have recovered from mental illness but are still languishing at treatment facilities because their families have abandoned them.
The Union health ministry has directed the state mental authority to rehabilitate about 550-600 people who have recovered from mental illness but are still languishing at treatment facilities because their families have abandoned them.
Last week, the National Mental Health Authority organised a conference at Delhi to review mental hospitals in the country. Dr Sanjay Kumavat, superintendent of the Thane Mental Hospital, represented Maharashtra.
“We were asked to prepare a plan for rehabilitating abandoned inmates. One suggestion was to have a shelter workshop, where they can stay as well as find employment. To create this kind of a facility, we will follow the public-private partnership model and have already approached NGOs working in this field,” said Kumavat.
He said that most mentally ill patients recover sufficiently after two or three months of hospital treatment and can then go home where their families should continue to nurse them back to health.
“But our society tends to look at any mental illness as a social stigma, and families abandon their own kin. We have inmates who have recovered completely and are now engaged in normal activities,” said Kumavat.
Maharashtra has four mental hospitals located in Thane, Nagpur, Ratnagiri and Pune. About 550-600 people who have recovered from mental illnesses continue to stay at the hospitals, with no hope of going home. Some have been there for 15-20 years. The Thane Mental Hospital alone has 180 such inmates.
According to senior doctors there, the numbers are high because some patients were picked up from the streets and brought by the police. Many of the recovered patients tend the garden and manage the hospital library.
Doctors say that more than 100 people have been admitted with fake addresses, at times by their relatives, in mental hospitals across the state over the past four years. Nobody turned up to meet them after they were admitted.
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