0 East Kalimantan Mentally Ill to Get Free Care

The East Kalimantan administration has vowed to bring an end this year to families locking up and shackling relatives suspected of having mental illness. The provincial administration is rolling out a program of free health care for mentally ill patients, which includes requiring hospitals to provide beds for chronically ill patients such as those with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. 

Rini Retno Sukesih, the head of the provincial health office, said a task force is gathering information about mentally ill patients throughout the province in preparation for the program. Shackling mentally ill relatives is common among Indonesian families, particularly in poorer parts of the country or where access to proper health care is limited or costly. Deputy Governor Farid Wadjdy said on Tuesday that of the 2,468 cases of mental illness recorded last year, 60 percent of the patients were found to have been kept in shackles by their families. 

“This year we hope to end this practice altogether because those with mental illnesses deserve to get the necessary medical care,” he said. “We ask that people stop chaining up their own family members and give them the care that they need.” Chaining the patients, often by the ankle or wrist but sometimes by the neck, is intended to prevent them from straying from the home. 

Farid denounced the practice as a human rights violation, and said provincial health authorities would campaign to get the message to residents that mentally ill family members should be taken to a hospital and not locked up. “Shackling is an inhumane act, and most people don’t understand the ramifications of keeping a person chained up for their whole life,” he said. 

“These patients should be handed into the care of medical authorities so they can be treated.” Separately, officials in West Kutai district announced they had freed a 40-year-old man who had been locked up in a 2-square-meter shack by his family for the past 12 years because he had exhibited a high degree of paranoia. He is now in the care of health authorities.

source : the jakarta globe