Madurai Messenger Making a Difference January 2013
Shant Manas: A Balm for the Mind Lea Buettner gives us a quick overview of the Shant Manas Mental Health Rehabilitation Centre in Madurai that reaches out to people with mental illness in rural areas around Madurai, providing inpatient and outpatient services as well as home visits to ensure that patients comply with medication
L. Vijayalakshmi (60) administrator at Shant Manas
Reaching out Bhuvaneswari confirms the difficulties doctors have in finding and treating mental health patients in outlying areas. To alleviate the symptoms of mental illnesses, it is necessary to have continuity in the treatment and Dr Vasudevan understood that it would be difficult to ensure that patients continue to take the pills they had been prescribed, particularly after initial improvements. To ensure compliance, he devised a follow-up programme whereby medical staff would return regularly to each of the villages in turn to explain the need for regular medication, counsel the patients and their families and give reassurance about their fears and misconceptions and clarify their doubts.
By Lea Buettner and Isabelle Brotherton Ratcliffe Germany
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D
riving to the headquarters of the Shant Manas India Trust, an organization promoting positive mental health in villages around Kochadai in Madurai, we have difficulty in finding the building which seems a metaphor for the quiet, unassuming style of this local charity. Shant Manas was established on August 18th,2007 by psychiatrist Dr C R Vasudevan with the aim of alleviating the problems caused by mental illnesses in rural areas around Madurai. At Shant Manas we were introduced to L Vijayalakshmi, a calm, gentle and soft spoken woman of 60. She worked for a few years as a school teacher in Chennai in Vivekananda Vidyalaya, Babuji Matriculation School. In Madurai, she worked in TVS Lakshmi Higher Secondary School and Anand Memorial Matriculation School, Dolphin Matriculation School and Karpagam Matriculation School, Paravai, where she worked as a Principal. She has handled subjects such as English, Science, History and Geography for students belonging to the 4th, 5th, 8th, 9th and 10th grades. She joined Shant Manas on the date of its inception to support Dr Vasudevan and his work. She is now the administrator of the organisation and is clearly very proud of her brother. She frequently cites her admiration for all that he has done and is happy to tell us about their work.
How it all began The story began when Dr Vasudevan was struck by the higher than average rate of suicides attributed to mental illness in some villages in Tamil Nadu and hence sought an explanation. At first, he selected five villages and that has now been
may be living in the shadows, out of sight of all but their neighbours. Shant Manas’s greatest successes are when these people are able to return to a balanced and routine lifestyle. Achieving this takes time and medication. The charity has access to lower priced medicines provided by a local pharmacy in support of their work, and the funding for this comes from friends and sponsors of the charity. The time is given by a team of social workers and trainee psychiatric nurses. Vijayalakshmi introduces us to S. Bhuvaneswari (42), the Senior Community Mental Health Social Worker at Shant Manas.
A sobering experience One of the charity’s focus areas is to train more nurses in psychiatric care. We met a group of trainee nurses who have
come to the headquarters for a training programme. They are students from one of the five nursing colleges working with Shant Manas and all are dressed in crisp white uniforms, carrying stethoscopes and are enthusiastic about their chosen field. The nurses, who are pursuing the second year of their Diploma in Nursing, out of the total three years, from Shenbagam School of Nursing which is run by Shenbagam Nursing Home in Anna Nagar, Madurai are keen to tell us how much they have learned and how they hope to put it into practice in their profession. The course lasts three weeks and during this time they are taught about mental illnesses and their treatments, about the meaning of being a psychiatric social nurse and about the Shant Manas patient survey. The girls are really excited about the project because they “do not only learn things out of books” but “see the reality”, as well. For some, it is a sobering experience and puts the problems of their own lives in perspective. Dr Vasudevan himself is now a consultant Psychiatrist and Psycho Therapist in England Andrews Health Care group of hospitals in England. He is also a medical advisor to an NGO called Mind in England. He is also an advisor to LEPRA (Leprosy Relief Association) in India and in England since 1977. He has worked in Australia, England and India. He has teaching experience in the field of Mental Health in the University of Essex, United Kingdom. Vijayalaksmi and the team of Shant Manas are greatly looking forward to the doctor’s visit shortly, and, I suspect, of showing him just how well the project he began is now flourishing.
“do not only learn things out of books” but “see the reality” increased to a total of eight each located at a distance of 20 kilometres from Madurai, and conducted a survey among the people to find out the number of mental illness cases. Of course many people have reservations about admitting to mental illness themselves, or in their family, believing it casts a stigma on their family. Through a gentle approach, Dr Vasudevan and his colleagues learnt about the symptoms and erratic behaviour which they could diagnose as depression, including post partum depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, mood disorder and post traumatic stress disorder.There were also cases of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease but Dr Vasudevan and his team decided to confine their attention to the conditions they could treat with regular medication. The problem in these cases is not only the number of sufferers driven to take their own lives, but that, depending on the severity of their cases, many patients are unable to work or remain integrated in their community. They
S. Bhuvaneswari (42), a senior social worker at Shant Manas
Trainee nurses at Shant Manas, from left to right D. Saranya, N. Mano, S. Prema (their tutor), P. Durgadevi, N. Rathika and T. Kalai Selvi
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