‘Mentally ill need special attention’

Mumbai: Sixty-year-old Mumbai psychiatrist Dr Bharat Vatwani – who, on Thursday, won this year’s Ramon Magsaysay Award for his work for mentally-ill people living on the streets – has called for the provision of “special care” for those battling mental ailments.

“We have witnessed the plight of the mentally ill, especially those afflicted with schizophrenia and bipolar-personality disorder, and the most important thing is that we need to take proper care of them,” Mr Vatwani said.

Mr Vatwani highlighted that mental disorders afflict five crore Indians, which is five per cent of the country’s population, and they need “special care”. He said, “Eighty per cent of our districts do not have even one psychiatrist in public service. WHO estimates of 2001 indicated a prevalence level of about 22 per cent of individuals developing one or more mental or behavioural disorders in their lifetime in India.”

For the past three decades, Mr Vatwani and his wife Dr Smitha have been serving the vulnerable section. The Shraddha Rehabilitation Foundation was started in 1989 by the couple, and since its inception, the organisation has reunited more than 2,000 people with their families. After completing his MBBS studies, Mr Vatwani earned a diploma in psychiatry at Grant Medical College which is famously known as J.J. Hospital. He then did his Masters at G.S. Medical College attached to KEM Hospital in Parel, and started practising in Borivali.

One evening when he was sitting in a Borivali restaurant sipping tea, he witnessed something unusual which led him to devote his life to this cause. “When I saw a very skinny young boy sitting on the roadside and drinking water from a gutter with a coconut shell, I took him to my nursing home and treated him for schizophrenia. As he recovered, I learned that he was a B.Sc. graduate. Thus, the saga started for me. Ever since, whenever anyone is lying disturbed on the roadside, the police, NGOs and Samaritans bring them here. It’s been three decades and nearly 2,000 people have been reunited with their families,” he recalled.