Being mentally ill in Indonesia: the harrowing pictures and report

© theguardian.com

“Shackling people with mental health conditions is illegal in Indonesia, yet it remains a widespread and brutal practice.”

Brilio.net/en - The practice of pasung, the Indonesian term for shackling or confining people with psychosocial disabilities, was banned in 1977 but yet is still used in Indonesia, where mental illness remains a taboo topic.

Concerned about the plight of these 19.000 people locked in one of the forty-eight mental hospitals across the country, the New York photographer Andrea Star Reese spent the years 2011 and 2012 in Indonesia. She was investigating the conditions of detention of the patients suffering of Psychiatric Disorder. Her appalling documentary, released in 2013, is coming back to the conversation those past days after the recent publishing of a new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) denouncing the conditions of living of mentally ill people in the Indonesian hospitals.

Shackling people with mental health conditions is illegal in Indonesia, yet it remains a widespread and brutal practice, said Kriti Sharma, disability rights researcher at Human Rights Watch and the author of the report. People spend years locked up in chains, wooden stocks, or goat sheds because families dont know what else to do and the government doesnt do a good job of offering humane alternatives.

Image viahrw.org

The Governments lack of effort in this matter is largely pointed out. Despite the launch of the Indonesia free from pasung program, which aims to eradicate the practice by 2019, improvement of the current conditions takes time to concretely happen. In a general way, the overall issue is hardly the Governments priority, as showed by the low budget dedicated to the health system in general. As an example, the ministry of healths budget is 1.5% of Indonesias central government expenditure for 2015.

According to some testimony, living in one of those hospital is like living in hell, and we can only imagine with the indignity that they face: almost no food, dont interact with others, live in their own excrement and urine, and are forced with physical or sexual violence of the guards (most not even qualified to be nurse).

Among the recommendation of HRW, Kriti Sharma insists on the right for the patients to give their consent to the treatments they are forced to endure (the use of magical herbs tea). It doesnt cost anything and could already improve a tiny bit some of the patients conditions of living. Other recommendations include amending the 2014 Mental Health Act to give people with psychosocial disabilities the same rights enjoyed by their fellow citizens, training mental health workers, and developing community-based services.

(brl/red)