OUT CASTE.

Anybody with a mental illness has a challenge to deal with. For the poor and the illiterate this is an insurmountable challenge. Many times he and his surrounding family have no idea what in the hell is wrong. If he is behaving strangely,seeing or hearing things which are not there, has plunged into depression for no reason at all or seems ecstatic, for no reason at all, they are puzzled. Mental diseases have many other odd symptoms. On the whole a patient can make a terrible nuisance of himself.
In the initial stages everybody might try to help. The odd behavior may prompt his family to look for a doctor. The first doctor is generally a general physician. He may prescribe some medicines and give some counselling to the patient. Even if the patient is in need of psychiatric intervention, he may not encourage a visit to a psychiatrist or even a psychologist. Many people are convinced that psychiatrists give medicines that are too strong and which leave the patients numb and  doped.
So what's the solution. Leave the patient alone. He will recover in time.
When he doesn't, then the uneducated or the illiterate start finding other methods. They go to a witch doctor, convinced that the patient is possessed. The witch doctor tries to exorcise the demon and gets nowhere.. The poor can no longer support such a person. He is thrown out of the house.
Where does he go? He wonders around the streets, alone and forsaken. Soon the police are informed about him. They bundle him up and send him to a mental hospital. The living conditions in the hospital for the free patients are abysmal. The toilets are filthy, their beds full of lice and bed bugs and there are rats running around. The food is inedible
Sometimes the police pack the patients up in jail. Here they languish for years. Needless to say that these solutions fail to cure the patient. They are truly out caste.
These horror stories affect us but most of us can do nothing about them. These patients live in hell for no fault of theirs. Nobody wants them.
And yet there can be hope. There are rehab centers that helps these patients. They go regularly to such mental hospitals and even jails where they pick up the patients and brings them to their half way homes. Here the patients are treated for their illness free of cost. When they recover, they are sent back home. Even after they leave, medicines are provided to them free of cost.
India needs more of such rehab centers. If we recognize the mentally ill poor patient as a person in dire straits needing immediate attention, then we can make a difference. It is necessary for charitable organizations and NGOs to make this a priority.
Perhaps then these horror stories will have happy endings. 

MAD

"MAD" is a cruel and derogatory term, used by the layman to define a person with a Mental Disease. "Crazy, loony, bats in the belfry", are also very defaming and inhuman. Yet they are used time and again. I have a Bipolar Disorder. I have had my share of this adjective.
It is not my fault that my mind plays tricks on me. I have gone through long periods of acute and meaningless depression. There was no reason for it. Yet I felt as if my world had come to an end. I thought that I would be unable to even raise my arm. I attempted suicide many times because I hated myself. One day i would be fine, the next day i would plunge into excruciating pain which i thought would last forever. 
It didn't, but I was left weak and trembling, convinced that I was feeble and a coward.
"I have no will power," I told my psychiatrist. I suffered from a terrible inferiority complex till I was diagnosed a Bipolar patient.
Even in this enlightened age, a mental disease, though controllable is taboo. People are afraid to talk about it. They would rather go through months and years of intense torture, rather than speak about it. What a shame?!
You can't find employment if you have a mental illness which has become public. You are told by your doctors, not to mention it in your workplace. If it becomes apparent, your employer will not think twice before firing you. You may have been doing a good job, but that is not even considered. At least it was not with me.
Tell me, will an employee get fired simply because he has high blood pressure or diabetes? No of course not. Then why this discrimination? A mentally afflicted person, may have his disease under control, but he would still be afraid and embarrassed to talk about it.
A mentally diseased person can be a nuisance. They can become violent or destructive. But the solution does not lie in denouncing them. It is a disease, and it can be treated. Rejection can only make it worse. Take a mental patient to a doctor for God's sake.
Don't condemn a person because he is stark raving mad in your opinion. Your opinion really really doesn't count.