Psychiatrist turns run-down mental hospital in Amritsar into institute of repute
A dogged psychiatrist has turned a run-down mental hospital in Amritsar into an institute of repute.
At first glance, the sprawling red stone-concrete building looks like a modest corporate office-high porch, manicured lawns, spic-and-span corridors and well-lit rooms. The only giveaway is a granite foundation stone at the entrance, introducing it as the Institute of Mental Health.
Located on the outskirts of Amritsar, the 450-bed hospital defies the stereotype of asylums in India as society's dustbin-where the mentally sick are dumped not to be treated but to die.
One would be hard-pressed to believe that only three years ago, this autonomous institute, then known as Vidya Sagar Government Mental Hospital, was classified by the National Human Rights Commission as one of the three worst mental hospitals in the country-overcrowded, unhygienic, mismanaged and notorious for inhuman treatment of its inmates.
All that changed with the Punjab government's appointment of a new director in 2001-psychiatrist Brij Lal Goyal, 62, who had long been a member of the statutory visitors' committee for the asylum.
While improving the diet and living conditions of the 465-odd patients, the most radical changes Goyal put in place were in treatment procedures. General physicians in the outpatient department have been replaced by psychiatrists. Chaining is banned and electric shocks are administered under an aesthesia.
There is also a rehabilitation centre for the recovered inmates not accepted by their families. "Being the worst critic of the hospital's functioning, I took it as a challenge to make things better," says the soft-spoken, hard task master that is Goyal.
Even the mentally sick can discern the change. "Earlier, it was like a horrible jail," says Seema, 40, a schizophrenic inmate for four years. So awful was the diet that her family had to shell out Rs 750 a month to get her a special diet that she gets for free today. Thanks to simplified procedures, new admissions to the hospital have increased from 82 in 1990 to 225 in 2004.
The number of patients discharged in 2004 was 189, about 20 times more than in 1990. "Goyal blends a humane approach with a hands-on administration," says activist Luxmi Kanta Chawla who has also been on the visitors' committee. Points out T. Murali, head of the Psychiatry and Rehabilitation Department, NIMHANS, Bangalore: "This institute can become a model regional centre for training and rehabilitation."
Some challenges remain though: social stigma attached to mental illness, shortage of qualified staff and a ruffled employees' union.
"There is scope for improvement," says Goyal modestly. But, the astounding transformation he has facilitated is nothing less than mind-altering.