The Hindu : New Delhi News : New facility for the mentally disturbed

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Sunday, Jul 27, 2008
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New Delhi

New facility for the mentally disturbed

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: The Delhi branch of the Richmond Fellowship Society (India), an organisation working for rehabilitation of patients with mental health problems, inaugurated a new facility on Saturday aimed at reaching out to more needy patients in and around the Capital.

The facility was inaugurated by Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for Analytic Economics at Cornell University of the US, Kaushik Basu. Airports Authority of India Member (Planning) V.P. Agrawal and film-maker and social worker Muzzafar Ali were guests of honour at the function.

According to a release issued by the Society, the newly built facility is custom designed for mental health care, particularly schizophrenia, and is aimed at providing care, comfort and safety to patients.

“The latest facility inaugurated by the Society will provide residential capacity for 20 persons and the day care centre has the capacity to take care of 40 persons. Besides this we also offer an activity hall, library and computer room, recreation room and counselling rooms. The Society also conducts programmes for development of social and practical skills to gradually integrate patients into society. These include activity scheduling individual and group psycho-therapies, yoga, music, art planned recreation and vocational training,” said Richmond Fellowship Society (India) Delhi branch president K.M. Khurana.

The Richmond Fellowship is a network of non-government charitable organisations working worldwide for rehabilitation of people suffering from mental illness. The objectives of the fellowship include providing residential community care for those who suffer from mental and emotional disturbance.

One per cent of the total population worldwide suffers from mental illness. It is estimated that 10 million people in India suffer from mental health problems.

“The objectives of the various programmes we run include providing support for mentally and emotionally disturbed persons to rehabilitate and integrate them with family and society; to create public awareness for eradicating stigma and to enhance people’s understanding of themselves and the disabled; to promote mental health in community and to collaborate and network with other organisations having similar objectives,” added Dr. Khurana.

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