The Banyan

The Banyan was established by two young women, then still in college, in response to a powerful sense of distress while trying to find help for a destitute woman in an acute psychotic state.

The Banyan, was started in 1993 to provide appropriate care for women with acute mental health problems. Initially based in urban Chennai (South India) the organization worked in the first decade of its existence developing models of caring, sharing and reuniting mentally ill destitute women with their often long-forgotten families. Today, the organization has a rural after care center and its model of caring has been actively taken up by the Tamil Nadu State Government for upgrading its own mental health institutions.

The Banyan is unique - It has mastered the art of street rescue, pacifying the women, caring for them, getting a court order for treatment, reporting to the psychiatric to assess the case and begin treatment, documenting details, giving medicines, helping with vocational training, building self confidence in the residents and finally traveling across India to reunite these women with their families on rehabilitation trips.

Circumstances forced its gaze outwards, to think in terms of transferring and sharing their model with the state machinery. Late 2004, this became a reality and now, the state government of Chennai is in the process of incorporating the approach into the very many areas that need to be a part of this rehabilitative process. A beginning has been made by sensitizing and energizing the police departments, who need to be at the forefront of these rescue missions.

6th Main Road
Mogapair Eri Scheme, Mogapair West
Chennai 600 058
Website: www.thebanyan.org

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Advocacy Initiatives

The Banyan has been developing and strengthening its model of care over the past eleven years, developing standard care procedures and management structures.

Systems Advocacy

Strengthening the state Institute of Mental Health (IMH):

  • Opening the IMH to homeless mentally ill persons through continuous dialogue and sensitization of the police force, health department and IMH personnel.
  • Lobbying with the health department for developing a joint rehabilitation strategy to support women residents of IMH.
  • Supporting the police in their current initiative of taking a pro-active role in the identification and first level care of homeless mentally ill and supporting them in placing such individuals into the IMH.
Influencing the state mental health policy and rules

  • Dialogue with the government on the critical components of mental health care based on the model of The Banyan. Focus especially on the need to ensure early detection and care for the mentally ill to prevent homelessness. This dialogue will be supported through a study to be undertaken in 2005 with WHO support.
  • Lobby with the government on the need for greater support to people with mental illness and their families through direct support such as pensions; and indirect assistance such as job placements.
  • Lobbying with the government to integrate mental health care with primary health care.
Development of a replicable model for early detection and community based care under the District Mental Health Project.
  • An outreach mental health program in Kancheepuram district which will gradually cover all blocks in the district. The focus will be on creating a knowledge base and skills of care among community level health care workers.
  • Providing a community clinic for primary mental health care.

Peoples' Advocacy

The organization has worked to raise awareness in the community on mental illness issues the Banyan has planned film screening and street theater performance. It has a Legal aid clinic for supporting metal illness issues. It organized the first national workshop on homelessness and mental illness with 37 NGOs, health experts and social activists. Following from here, NGOs have been encouraged to support each other in effort of re-uniting women with their families in different states of the country. Mainstreaming: The Banyan has rented a house for close to ten residents who are able to live in an independent setting. They take care of their own needs, and a few of them are employed outside. This 'Group Home' provides an example of the life that is possible for those recovering from mental illness

Civil Advocacy

Complete integration is the focal point of The Banyan's model of street rescue, treatment and rehabilitation. For women restored to their families outside Tamil Nadu, The Banyan periodically sends psychiatric drugs free of cost by post. The follow-up care is more intensive in the case of those rehabilitated within Tamil Nadu. Residents resettled within Chennai are encouraged to visit The Banyan's free Outpatient facility every week for consultation with the psychiatrist. The weekly outpatient clinic is open to the entire community and attracts non-residential patients too.

The Banyan also operates a Rest Home separate from the transit centre that caters to about 50 women for whom the rehabilitation process has been delayed and whose condition requires a different setting altogether.

Employment opportunities -- The Banyan has been focusing on employing residents outside Banyan. A couple of residents have been trained in a beautician's course and are now working at established beauty parlours in Chennai. The Banyan has also networked with Magworld, the magazine section at the FoodWorld chain of department stores, to place a couple of residents to handle sales.

Free psychological counseling is provided through a mental health clinic located in an extremely economically backward Chennai neighbourhood once a week and is a response to the high rate of suicides prevailing in the area.

A permanent Lok Adalat and a free Legal Aid clinic has a visiting Magistrate to pass Reception Orders to provide legal backing to the tenure of The Banyan's residents in the institution. The State Legal Services Authority has also deputed a lawyer to help the women access free legal aid for their personal problems.

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Salma's story

Teenaged Salma was found in chains wandering the streets of Chennai and brought to The Banyan. Her condition drew the attention of newspapers and her story made news last June. In time, The Banyan managed to find her family in Ajmer and learned her real story. Salma had developed mental illness when very young. Her family got her married young and she had a son. Without proper treatment her condition deteriorated and she was soon unmanageable.

It was her own family that had bound her up in chains and taken her to a Muslim dargah in Chittoor for faith healing. Salma had escaped along the way and wandered to Chennai. Today Salma needs no chains. Medication has rendered her completely manageable. Salma never need have been chained. Ignorance and superstition had led her to be bound and denied medication and treatment that would have helped her recover.

Salma's parents showed us her wedding pictures. A young, beautiful Salma decked up in red and gold, her hands adorned with mehendi, a far cry from the dirty, dishevelled, chained creature rescued from the streets. It is a condition she would never have reached if her family knew that she could be treated and the treatment was easily accessible and affordable locally.

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Chitra Begum

Chitra Begum was rescued from Central Railway Station on March 28, 2003. She had been on the streets for more than 15 years. Just over a year after she entered The Banyan though, Chitra was ready to go home, and she did…on June 15, 2004.

Chitra was clear about the name of the area where her house was located, but not its location. When The Banyan team were scouring the area they were lucky enough to come across somebody who recognised Chitra and offered to lead her to her husband's house. But on reaching the house, they learned that the husband had died a few years ago.

By then news of Chitra's return had reached her mother and brother. They came rushing over and took Chitra home where the rest of her family, including her daughter, were waiting eagerly to see her. Her daughter was in tears. They had all thought her dead.

From her family The Banyan learned that Chitra had had the illness for the last 30 years. She was married off at the age of 10 when the onset of illness started and they had used traditional healers, but no modern medicine. Chitra's family had simply no knowledge about mental illness.

Her husband reportedly didn't treat her well and he died a while later. Chitra was then married again but was not treated well there too. Her family said Chitra's condition deteriorated because of ill-usage. She used to be able to work and had been employed as a housemaid in a few houses. As she became worse, she began to roam around the place, tearing off her clothes, and talking to herself. One day she simply wandered away. That was 17 years ago. Her husband had married again, but had died recently.

Chitra had five children. Two had died when she was still at home and the small baby she had left behind, died a few days after she disappeared. Of her remaining children, her son had grown up and now worked in a tannery and the daughter, now around 15, worked as a housemaid.

With the right treatment, Chitra was now ready to lead her life in the midst of this family who once thought they had lost her forever.

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