Mentally disabled - whose responsibility are they?

by Kesarralal Gunasekera

We categorise health into two parts, physical and mental. If you take the health services available in Sri Lanka, it is more or most geared to cater to the physical health needs of the people.

I recently read that thirteen per cent of our population is suffering from some sort of mental disorder. According to the 2002 census, there are 70,000 mentally disabled persons in Sri Lanka, but unfortunately, this is still not considered big enough a problem for our government to tackle.

We know that although Sri Lanka is a signatory to the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Right of the Child, the rights of the physically and mentally challenged are hardly considered. In the case of mentally challenged persons, the situation is far worse; for two reasons - one is that they are unable to fight for their rights and the other is that they are mostly hidden in our midst.

The minorities and marginalised in our society have the mental and physical ability and often the space and opportunity to fight for their rights; demonstrations, protests, marches, satyagrahas and even petitions are ways in which they can make their voices heard.

But those suffering from mental disorders lack the ability to do any of these things; can a mentally challenged person write an article or a letter to the editor? Will any television or radio station invite them for a discussion? NO. Therefore, they need someone else to advocate on their behalf. But the question is who is there to advocate for the rights of the most disadvantaged group in our society? I would say none. Of course, there are those who work very closely to help the mentally disabled.

But to this day, I have not seen a person or a group making a strong effort to highlight the state of the mentally challenged to receive the required attention of the government.

On the other hand, the government MUST take an initiative to address the needs of the mentally disadvantaged. To me, the question is whether our State health institutions are equipped with the right kind and amount of human resources to make an intervention that can have an impact, because there is a range of mental illnesses, cerebral palsy, Down's syndrome, autism, hyper-activism, learning disorders and communication difficulties just to name some.

Therefore, we need experts for all these, yet I am sad to say that we do not even have ten child psychiatrists in our country. And most unfortunately, even in this day and age, our society continues to have a stigma about mental disorders which puts these children at a greater disadvantage.

Families, particularly parents, lack awareness on how to accept and help these children. As a result, many children end up in children's homes or institutions which deprive them of the thinnest chance of becoming valuable citizens of our society.

This is the truth. All children need to grow up in a family environment where they get the love and care they need. Children with mental disorders need as much love and care as the other children, maybe even more. But a home or an institution can and will cater only to the basic physical needs of the child.

Parenting, I would think, is the most important job in the world, but it is a job that everyone does without any learning or training. In more developed countries, training is given to parents on how to take care of a child who has mental difficulties.

But we need awareness which is most suited for our culture and society. To us; our children are our whole world, our future. We have a saying in Sinhala 'Una hapuluwata uge petiya menikak' which means 'to the skunk lorris its offspring is a treasure'.

We find it very difficult to accept that our child has a disability. We need to start at that point in preparing parents to accept their children no matter what the disability is. Particularly, they need to see the ability in the child and not focus on the disability. Once accepted, finding help is not that difficult.

Children with mental disorders can be helped to a great extent to overcome their difficulties. We must also see to the protection of these children given their state, they are at risk of being sexually or physically abused. But these instances are hardly reported.

The reason for this is because we as a society are shameful to admit that we have such an offspring. We think that having a child with mental disorders will affect the progress of the other children in the family. Often, children such as these are locked up in a room and are prevented from interacting with others and we justify this by saying that it is for their own protection. But we fail to understand their needs.

As for any other child, we must also see to the future of these children. We must not forget that although they are mentally challenged, their physical needs are very much those of a normal person. I know of an international school which was kind enough to employ a mentally challenged person, but had to sack the person after girl children complained about his sexual advances.

This is clear example of how little we know of the needs of the mentally retarded. They need our empathy and not sympathy. We also must not rule out the possibility of them outliving their parents. In a situation like that, who will see to their welfare? These are serious issues we need to address at national level.

Our education authorities have considered what they call 'inclusive education' for differently abled children. But our teachers are not yet trained to identify and cater to the many different cases of mental disorders.

Therefore, even if they get the opportunity to go to a regular school children do get humiliated by teachers and other students, and are deprived of reaching their full potential. I think all of us have a great responsibility to speak on behalf of the mentally challenged persons in our midst.

But our voices must bring about changes for these children and many others in our country; young and old. As the Buddha said, mind is the forerunner of all our actions and the absence of a sound mind is an inexplicably sad state. So we must act now; these children cannot wait, and tomorrow maybe too late.