Out Of The Four Walls

Care for the mentally ill should look beyond the “madhouse” and towards inclusive communities with a place for persons with psychosocial disabilities. BY RADHIKA ALKAZI AND AMBA SALELKAR.

- Radhika Alkazi and Amba Salelkar

ARMAAN ALKAZI, A RESEARCHER IN MENTAL health, narrates his experience of Ishwar Sankalpa, an organisation that encourages community interventions for persons perceived to have mental disorders:

“We go looking for Kuku Didi behind a dilapidated wall in a densely populated part of southern Kolkata. Kallu, my guide and translator, leads me to a small clearing, with jhuggis on one side and a decaying two- storey building on the other. The ground is slightly charred and awash with plastic bags. We find Kuku Didi napping on the first-floor landing, and Kallu is forced to wake her up. She is shy as Kallu goes through the process of ‘checking in’—asking about how she eats, her medication, whether she manages to collect enough plastic bags to get by. She nods but does not speak, reserving a generous half smile for me. Kuku Didi used to live in the jhuggi cluster next door. After her husband died, she fell into a depression, and her son with his wife insisted that Living hell there was no space in the house for her. Suddenly, she was homeless and severely ill.