In a sensitive letter written from New Delhi, Rukmini Pillai (‘Wrong picture’) cautioned this week against easy generalisations on the mentally ill. Besides warning against stigmatisation, she also noted the tendency to equate treatability with curability. They are different. So, while a condition like schizophrenia is treatable, it needs constant attention.

• AS someone who takes care of a dearly loved one with schizophrenia, I am pained by the inaccurate and archaic undertone in an article on the mentally ill being abandoned by their families in ‘asylums’ (‘Cured but unwanted: trauma continues for asylum inmates’).

Millions of families provide dedicated care to family members with mental illness as opposed to the few who abandon them. There are only 40 mental health facilities in India, which house about 500 people. But India has more than 65 million people with mental illnesses.

It is important to point out that schizophrenia is treatable but not curable. A few lucky patients do go into remission but most have to take lifelong medication and need a lot of care and therapy. Families of people with mental illness must not be judged until one takes the trouble of stepping into their shoes. As it is, both the patients and their families have been neglected by successive governments. Families are left to fend for themselves with their limited resources, without knowing how to manage the episodes of psychosis, violence and attempts at suicide and with no insurance to meet the medical expenses. Most families adapt to grieving; very few abandon their family members. Harping on ‘abandonment by families’ in articles such as this is unfortunate, highly questionable and not fair to the millions of families who provide care.

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