A Phoenix Rising up, to love from the ashes vile

Working with mentally ill people gives you a great deal of food for thought. You begin to notice human behavior minute by minute, hour by hour as there are frequent changes. The conversations you have with them often end up with the listener feeling muddled and it does help to talk to another person to get all the cobwebs cleared. It is with a great feeling of love, empathy and will that one works with such people. The need for them to feel appreciated, loved, wanted is quite apparent in the ways they seek reassurance and praise at most junctures of their little actions.

Love is something we as mental health workers strive to give out at the best of our ability, but with the knowledge that we need to look carefully before we step. The mere need for affection, even with a fake stomachache is yearned for because many of the mentally ill in Sri Lanka lead isolated and often lonely lives and when you look at the niche of the issue, you sometimes feel that 'loneliness' is the only illness they have.

Stigma has become a cliched term in the mental health circles around the world. It is still apparent, it is there haunting the ill, their families and gradually the entire society, who eventually begin to ostracize, categorize and corner those who are ill and suffering. It is like garbage etching its self on all parts of the nation. It reeks of ridicule, disharmony and despair. 'Pissa' 'Angoda Case' are some of the vile terms we hear being used to describe the mentally ill in Sri Lankan society. It is however credible that the Angoda Mental Hospital has been renamed the National Institute of Mental Health, and this could be a step towards battling stigma.

' Machan, pissoda sahanayata enne? ', is a question, an innocent one a friend asked me very recently and I did not quite know how to answer him.

They are beautiful people in their own little ways. They will acknowledge you, smile at you at least most of the time and they also have good values ingrained in them which we sometimes fail to recognize. One beautiful incident that will always stay with me is when I helped a client at Sahanaya who had cut him self on a piece of glass. Humanity at it's best was portrayed here when he shyly approached me a good hour later with something wrapped in a tiny piece of white paper. It was a piece of milk toffee he had bought from the tuck shop, for me...

The clients feel like family now, with their various idiosyncrasies. It is a joyous six hours I spend at Sahanaya five days a week and very few things in life can give me that kind of satisfaction.

" Music heard is sweet, music unheard is even sweeter' John Keats