I used to often see a woman at the road-side in rags, teased by everyone around...she was a schizophrenic abandoned by her family. One day she was brought to the hospital by a symphathizer and was in acute labour pain. Not long after, she gave birth to a baby boy but once she recovered from the episode, she left the hospital least bothered to even take a glimpse of her baby.
The job of bringing up the one day old infant without the mother was left to us. With no decent orphanages around, we had no choice but to find foster parents for this new-born and today the child is happy, being the only son of a couple who were not blessed with their own. The mother is no more to be seen ....wonder what must have happened to her. This had forced me to contemplate about the way we treat insane people. Where did all the human right activists go? Where were all those who were fighting for women's rights?....Wasn't this woman raped?
The insane never get the justice they deserve, the irony is that to get justice you have to be able to fight for it and they are just not able to do that. Has anyone seriously done a head-count of the number of mentally-compromised people? Has the government or the Medical Council of India ever bothered how many mental beds we have in our hospitals? There is a serious shortage in the number of asylums, rehabilitation centres and hospitals for the insane people. The corporate hospitals are not going to think about it and even if they do, they will cater only to insane of the elite and well-to-do families.
It's time we properly rehabilitate the lunatic to fulfil both their rights and also to reduce the danger and the unpredictability of having them around. One might recall an incident when a girl was slit by the throat by an insane at the Gateway of India, unprovoked some years back.
We too are all insane in our own way. Insanity is a continuous spectrum of a disease where all of us fall somewhere along its continuum and we can easily become one of those whom we tease and to whom we throw stones. They are very much much part of us and we have to accept them in our fold and rehabilitate them on the right hands.
The insane need your love and support; I reverberate their unheard voice.
The job of bringing up the one day old infant without the mother was left to us. With no decent orphanages around, we had no choice but to find foster parents for this new-born and today the child is happy, being the only son of a couple who were not blessed with their own. The mother is no more to be seen ....wonder what must have happened to her. This had forced me to contemplate about the way we treat insane people. Where did all the human right activists go? Where were all those who were fighting for women's rights?....Wasn't this woman raped?
The insane never get the justice they deserve, the irony is that to get justice you have to be able to fight for it and they are just not able to do that. Has anyone seriously done a head-count of the number of mentally-compromised people? Has the government or the Medical Council of India ever bothered how many mental beds we have in our hospitals? There is a serious shortage in the number of asylums, rehabilitation centres and hospitals for the insane people. The corporate hospitals are not going to think about it and even if they do, they will cater only to insane of the elite and well-to-do families.
It's time we properly rehabilitate the lunatic to fulfil both their rights and also to reduce the danger and the unpredictability of having them around. One might recall an incident when a girl was slit by the throat by an insane at the Gateway of India, unprovoked some years back.
We too are all insane in our own way. Insanity is a continuous spectrum of a disease where all of us fall somewhere along its continuum and we can easily become one of those whom we tease and to whom we throw stones. They are very much much part of us and we have to accept them in our fold and rehabilitate them on the right hands.
The insane need your love and support; I reverberate their unheard voice.
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