MENTAL ASYLUMS- A DAMNED PLACE

India’s mental hospital at Agra is equally famous as the Taj Mahal across the globe. For many years we have made jokes related to the mental hospitals (pagal khaana) but on a serious note, have you ever wondered what exactly must the condition be inside? How well or worse the inhabitants must be? Whether or not they get the required treatment for their mental illness?

After having read a lot about this subject, I would like to present the serious negligence that government has shown towards these mental asylums.

In a mental hospital of Kolkata (I would not name) although the temperature in afternoon rises to almost 35-40 degrees, there are no fans in the lobby or rooms. The patients are forced to live in a 4x5 feet room and a pathetic environment.

People suffering from mental illness are sent here so as to get treated and send them back home in a healthy state. But the poor inhabitants, who have some hopes of recovery subside to depression and physical illness because of lack of proper recreational facilities, fans, nutritional food and the very basic- DOCTORS!!!

A normal human need at least 2500 calories to carry out the basic chores, but the patients in most asylums get hardly 1000-1500 calories. Now tell me, how one can even think that they will recover from their illness if they do not even receive the required amount of nutrition? There are no fruits or salads in their meal. They have MIX VEG and DAL, which is most of the times watery.

This is the condition in most of the mental hospitals in India. This is not the end; these people are also sprayed with INSECTICIDES to kill the body lice!!! Many are forced to remain NAKED and tortured.

Now tell me guys, do you really think these places can be called as HOSPITALS???? Sometimes I feel they are nothing less than detention camps and instead of improving the patient’s condition, it only degrades. All the money that government allocates in the budget for mental hospitals is siphoned off by the officials and hardly anything reaches for these people.

This is a serious area that government and NGOs need to start looking into and lot of contribution needs to be done to uplift them. Even they are a part of our society.

Have a heart! J