By Dr Sarada Menon

Till a few decades ago, most schizophrenic patients were taken to mental hospitals and were left there with no care. They used to wander inside the hospital and doctors like me used to treat them. We took measures to send them back home after they became normal. But most of them did not have an address to get back. Or if they had one, the family, especially of women patients, were not willing to take them back.

Once I treated the elder girl in a family who was mentally ill. She recovered and we returned her to her family. Later, when her younger sister was getting married, the family invited me. They said, “We are inviting you because you are very close to us. But please do not attend the wedding. People who come for the marriage would ask us about our acquaintance and we might have to reveal that you are our elder daughter’s doctor.”

There were days when the mental hospital in Chennai was full of patients who had become normal. So, in the 1960s, I took efforts and spoke to the YWCA to provide space for these women. They started a small centre for about 10 patients. My social workers used to visit them, give them medicines once a week and keep them engaged. I remember treating a Sri Lankan patient who was repatriated and was made to stay at the YWCA after recovery.

But those days have gone. More people come out for treatment and there is more awareness because of the social activists who work in this field. Earlier, the mentally ill used to be chained and quarantined. They need continuous treatment, medication and individual attention.

But I feel there is a long way to go. Films depict a wrong stigma, which takes us back to the bad old days. This has to be stopped. And the stigma is more in north India. The stigma, I would say, is not from inside the patient, but due to outside factors like the people who take care of them. Earlier they used to be ostracised, but now, the patient’s relatives do not want others to know about the condition. This is the case with the upper middle-class.

What they actually need is personal attention. They might talk nonsense sometimes, but that does not matter. Attention and communication are effective ways to cure schizophrenia. This is why I introduced social workers who would get personally attached with the patients.

Recently, I treated an IT employee in her early 30s. Her work pressure and stress made her a schizophrenic. She had bizarre ideas and bizarre thoughts and used to hear voices. We had to put her under continuous medication. She came for regular check-ups. Now she is normal. My advise to her was pranayama and yoga. These can help heal.

Menon, 92, is one of the first women psychiatrists in the country and is the founder of SCARF (Schizophrenia Research Foundation) in Chennai As told to Lakshmi Subramanian