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Breaking The Chains That Bind The Mentally Ill
By Susan Brink October 10, 2014 9:14 AM ET
http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/10/10/354997096/breaking-the-chains-that-bind-the-mentally-ill
Love, respect, integration into communities, work, housing, food and clean water: That's what mentally ill people, like all human beings, need. Instead, in many parts of the developing world, people with mental illness are chained, nearly starved and even locked in a cage with a wild animal like a hyena to scare the demons out of them.
The World Health Organization's Chain-Free Initiative was launched in 2008 to help improve mental health services around the world. On this year's World Mental Health Day, organized by WHO to raise awareness of mental health issues, the theme is schizophrenia, a severe mental disorder characterized by false beliefs, hallucinations and unclear thinking. We talked with Dr. Taghi Yasamy, senior medical officer in the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at WHO, about the plight of people with schizophrenia.
In general, many people in low-income countries believe that schizophrenia is the result of possession by evil spirits. Beliefs like that are very common, and people use different techniques to try to get rid of the evil spirits. For example, they'll chain people — to beds in the house, to trees outside. They might give them only water, bread and pepper. They believe the spirits will leave because they don't like pepper. They might leave [the mentally ill person] in chains for as long as 40 days with just bread and water. Or they'll expose them to a wild animal, thinking the animal will scare the spirits away. In some places, they'll brush the skin harshly to get the spirits out. In the lowest income countries, it's common to see such things.
The stigma is strong in many countries. So families try to hide these patients. They want to confine the person, and they do unethical things like putting the patient in a cage. In places where they are not rich enough to afford a cage, they might chain [the patient] to a tree.
The World Health Organization's Chain-Free Initiative was launched in 2008 to help improve mental health services around the world. On this year's World Mental Health Day, organized by WHO to raise awareness of mental health issues, the theme is schizophrenia, a severe mental disorder characterized by false beliefs, hallucinations and unclear thinking. We talked with Dr. Taghi Yasamy, senior medical officer in the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at WHO, about the plight of people with schizophrenia.
In general, many people in low-income countries believe that schizophrenia is the result of possession by evil spirits. Beliefs like that are very common, and people use different techniques to try to get rid of the evil spirits. For example, they'll chain people — to beds in the house, to trees outside. They might give them only water, bread and pepper. They believe the spirits will leave because they don't like pepper. They might leave [the mentally ill person] in chains for as long as 40 days with just bread and water. Or they'll expose them to a wild animal, thinking the animal will scare the spirits away. In some places, they'll brush the skin harshly to get the spirits out. In the lowest income countries, it's common to see such things.
The stigma is strong in many countries. So families try to hide these patients. They want to confine the person, and they do unethical things like putting the patient in a cage. In places where they are not rich enough to afford a cage, they might chain [the patient] to a tree.
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I'm the Unknown Beatle 
Not the Unknown Beetle
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Not the Unknown Beetle
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