The statistics are alarming and scary: in 1991 the Hospital for Mental Health here catalogued 9,991 out-door patients (ODP). Six years later in 1997, it had almost doubled up to 17,057. Some have landed there because they failed, while others have followed because they couldn't handle their success.

Staff at the hospital cite various reasons; some as seemingly far fetched as break up of the joint family system and the economic crisis. But the most important is an insidious individualism and a pervasive sense of materialism the need to `have' and to excel. Expectedly, failed marriages top the charts.

Psychiatric social worker at the hospital Girish Trivedi says the number of patients who come to be treated is showing an alarming rise. The graph is increasingly pointing upwards. ``There are all sorts of illnesses,'' he says, ``we have those suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, acute psychosis, manic depression, epilepsy and personality disorders.''

And these are just figures of those who come themselves or are sent by their family to the hospital. There are others who keep both the mad and their madness under wraps for fear of being labelled `pagal', or due to trepidation at the thought of derisive comments like, `it must be in the family.' The superintendent at the hospital, who doesn't want to be named, maintains that very few neurotic cases come there because of the stigma and the `bad stamp' that follows them. ``They would rather go to the civil hospital,'' he says, adding, ``we cater mostly to psychotic cases.''

There are also many who are taken to quacks and witch doctors, to be beaten with brooms and sticks, to have the `devil' taken out of them in smoky rooms.

``There has to be an awareness drive and society has to change in its attitude towards the mentally ill. We cannot treat them like animals, beating them, stoning them, and always driving them away,'' says Trivedi. There are no complaints against the Government. There is adequate staff -- 212 in all -- for the 220 inmates lodged there. The staff claim they have access to the latest drugs in the market and they have almost done away with the outdated electric convergence therapy (ECT). ``We need more personnel and more qualified doctors, but it is a never ending problem,'' says an official.''

The superintendent says the situation is much better after the Supreme Court asked all the State Governments to file affidavits regarding their infrastructure vis-a-vis the 1987 Mental Health Act. The Central Government notification on the Act came in January 1, 1993.

``More than the treatment, it is the rehabilitation which is more difficult,'' he says. ``Many patients come back to the hospital because of legal and societal pressures. No one wants them back. They have nowhere to go.'' He cites a patient, who after undergoing treatment for more than 20 years -- and getting cured, now wants to come back to the hospital, unable to handle her loneliness and the alienation.

The patient, Rajkumari, weeps, ``My daughters don't want me, my family doesn't want me. I want to come back here because this is where I found love. Everyone was so nice to me here.''