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Extended Summary:

India’s mentally ill women face twin prejudices.

Relatives and police often find it easy to put women in mental institutions without their consent, according to a report put out by non-profit outfit Human Rights Watch on the plight of mentally ill and disabled women in India.

She is painfully thin and unusually calm for someone whose patient-file records her first visit to the hospital as aggressive.

That is what happened to me and that is what everyone calls becoming pagal (mad), she says.

This is what it means for her: she is not just any person with mental illness, she is a woman with a mental illness, making her doubly vulnerable in a country which is still grappling with the idea of accepting women as equal to men.

Last August, the Rajya Sabha passed the Mental Health Care Bill 2013, which provides for protection and promotion of rights of persons with mental illness during the delivery of healthcare in institutions and in the community.

On paper, everything is in place.

But as Bhargavi Davar, a mental health activist says, while India has tried to modernize its laws, not much has changed on the ground other than the description of these patients.

It is so easy to get away with institutionalizing someone in this country, or labelling them mentally ill, she says.

But Saswati Chakraborti, a psychiatric social worker at IHBAS, rejects such criticism.

Only if the person is unconscious or harming self or others, do we admit them, she says.

Psychiatric epidemiological data cites a ratio of one woman for every three men attending public health psychiatric outpatients clinics in urban India.

As a result, the mentally ill woman is socially ostracized and abandoned.

If not, she becomes a burden, an additional mouth to feed.

It was in one of these four rooms that the 49-year-old mentioned at the beginning of the story was admitted the second timewhen she imagined a Hindu goddess was talking to her.

There are beds in these tidy rooms, and the corridors are clean but thats not always the case in other such institutions.

Many of them had not bathed or shaved for months.

At the end of 2005, nearly 10-20 million (1-2% of the overall population) people suffered from severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and nearly 50 million (about 5% of the population) suffered from common mental disorders like depression and anxiety, the government said in Parliament in May 2016.

44%).

She believes her sister-in-law used black magic on her and was the reason both for her husbands alcoholism and her illness.

A few months and several visits to a tantrik baba (a witch-doctor) later, her son took her to a doctor.

People dont realize that most of the nerve supplies are in the brain, followed by the gut.

Before visiting a psychiatrist, they visit at least two-three physicians, says Nand Kumar, associate professor in the department of psychiatry at AIIMS.

To top that, there are 3,800 psychiatrists, 898 clinical psychologists, 850 psychiatric social workers and 1,500 psychiatric nurses nationwide.

Many argue that the present mental healthcare system in the country, with its emphasis on psychiatric services, is inappropriate to meet the mental health needs of women, who usually want counselling and support structures.

A comprehensive healthcare is required, says health activist Davar, who is also managing director and founder of Bapu Trust, a non-profit organization dedicated to research in the area of mental health..

For the mentally ill, among other problems, housing too is a concern.

The symptoms became worse and she was sent to a mental institution.

All the three daughters were living with their mother.

This isnt an isolated incident.

To create more housing options for the mentally ill, the Banyan offers cluster group homes, shared housing and group homes.

It offers more independent livinga house for five-six patients, along with a healthcare assistant, located within a community and with no locks.

They will be earning on their own but sharing a house.

Surprisingly, there is less stigma around mental illness among the poor or lower middle classes.

Among the upper middle class, stigma is high.

There is always fear of losing something, says Krishnadas.

I kept thinking of how my husband behaved with me, beat me up, how he came home everyday drunk.

In the psychiatric department of IHBAS, there are rows and rows of peopleboth men and womenwaiting to be heard.

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