The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Making a mark in mental healthcare

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Nov 26, 2006
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Making a mark in mental healthcare

Staff Reporter

BANGALORE: Rehabilitation of the chronically mentally ill is a much-neglected area of healthcare delivery in India, given that an estimated 10 per cent of the population is affected by some kind of psychiatric ailment.. Bangalore alone has nearly 90,000 people suffering from serious illnesses, S. Kalyanasundaram, secretary-general, Richmond Fellowship Society-India (RFS-I) said here on Saturday.

The RFS (I), which was celebrating 20 years of mental healthcare in Bangalore, Delhi and Lucknow, had provided care and rehabilitation to over 7,000 beneficiaries in 2005-06, Dr. Kalyanasundaram said.

RFS (I) is affiliated to the Richmond Fellowship in the United Kingdom.

Elly Jansen founded it in 1959, first as a single psychiatric halfway house in Richmond, where she invited ex-patients from local hospitals to live there. The success of this venture has since been affirmed by the growth of a network of halfway houses across the United Kingdom.

Ms. Jansen has since established Richmond Fellowship programmes and houses around the world. The principles of therapeutic community, peer support and psychosocial rehabilitation are used to support individuals and groups.

Ms. Jansen, who was the guest of honour here, is the founder and chief executive officer of Richmond Fellowship International, which she founded after studying psychology in Amsterdam, and working with disturbed children for some time. The Richmond Fellowship encouraged residential patients to work in groups and learn about each other's problems, since sharing anxieties and confiding in one another helped in recovery, Ms. Jansen said.

Rehabilitation

The Richmond Foundation Homes are geared to rehabilitation so that those who leave can fend for themselves in society. Today, there are 200 Richmond Foundation houses worldwide.

The last five decades had seen a sea change in popular perception about mental illness, and there were many medical interventions that could address them, but the pressures of living in the fast-paced world had also seen a rise in the prevalence of mental illness.

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