Administering to the Homeless Mentally Ill - Giving a Voice to Those Who Lost Their Own

(Posted on September 15, 2010)

You pass them on the street.  You see them around the different transit stations. You drive past their homes on the side of the road and look the other way.  They come up to you asking for food or money.  They have family or friends nearby living in a similar condition. They are in dire need of assistance.  Yet, these people are ok. 

Maybe a bit hungry with visible signs of malnutrition, they have a place to call home.  They know who they are and where they are from.  They have somebody else to help look after them.  While they may live in a slum, they have shelter - a roof over their head.

Can you imagine anything lower than this?  Most of us can't, at least I couldn't until I met Sarbani Das Roy and her small, highly dedicated team at Iswar Sankalpa and actually visited some of these people over the past few days.  They are homeless.  They are both women and men. They don't know where they are from.  They don't know who they are. They don't know what language they are speaking. They don't know how they ended up in Kolkata. A couple of the women don't even know they are pregnant, yet are just a few months from giving birth.

They are not retarded.  Most don't show many outwardly physical signs of illness. They have a mental disorder, classified as schizophrenia, and can usually be treated with medication, if the doctor or social worker can get them to take it.

Over the past two days, my IBM teammate Minke (from Holland) and I tagged along with Iswar Sankalpa staff to visit and administer to some of these people.  At times it was difficult to see, as these are people you typically look away from.  On Tuesday we went with two social workers and a doctor to the Sealdah Train Station in Central Kolkata. We started in a grassy and muddy area a bit away from the station, but very close to the train tracks where a few of the patients live.  These were not slums, as there was no real roof or sense of community.  One man was angry because the social worker did not visit him over the weekend, even though she is there Monday through Friday. Another woman was previously helped, but left after she started getting better and therefore stopped taking medication, only to return to the station in a state like before. She was hungry but would not talk or let the social worker help her. After being offered a plastic bag of warm rice, sauce and vegetables, she grabbed it quickly and ran down the train platform.  Later we would catch up to her as she sat on the ground eating quickly; and not knowing that in her specific bag of food was medicine that will help her get better again with hopes that she would let the doctor help her. Some of the patients easily allowed the doctor to take their blood pressure and had no issue taking the medicine that was given to them.  Others were more stubborn and withdrawn.  Some were offered the opportunity to go to the shelter, but they refused. They like the freedom and independence that the train station and surrounding area provided them. This was their "home".

Iswar Sankalpa works very hard to help the mental state of these people.  It offers the women a place to spend the night or many nights, if they are willing, while the team tries to locate their families so they may go home.  The men can go to a day shelter at the Hastings Police Station, also known as the drop in center. If someone requires additional medical attention, they are taken to a local hospital and followed up on even after they are discharged, so the team can still try to help them find their home.

Iswar Sankalpa doesn't force anyone to do anything they don't want to do.  They spend weeks and months visiting the patients and offers them choices of going to the shelter, or letting the doctor examine them, even where they live on the street, as we did on Tuesday.

A small crowd usually formed whenever we stopped to help a patient or when Dr. Mukherjee was taking their blood pressure.  It would be my hope that in some way these bystanders would start to take notice of the homeless mentally ill sitting nearby them and perhaps look at them in a slightly different way.