With over 23 lakh mentally-challenged people and little professional guidance to rehabilitate the population, the Centre is planning to set up a National Institute of Mental Health Rehabilitation.
According to the 2001 Census, the number of people with mental disabilities was nearly 23 lakh out of the total number of disabled, which was about 2.19 crore. Disability experts, however, say that the figure is highly underestimated owing to social stigma associated with it.
“The mentally challenged population in the country is huge and only growing. The Ministry is fully committed to removing barriers, physical or otherwise for the empowerment of people with disabilities and to ensure their full and equal participation,” said Kumari Selja, Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment. She was speaking at the National Conference on Intellectual Disability.
“Considering the urgent need of rehabilitation services and shortage of professionals to handle the complex problems of this group of very special persons, we are planning to set up National Institute of Mental Health Rehabilitation,” said Stuti Kacker, secretary, department of disability affairs under MSJE.
“Studies show that 42 per cent of intellectual disabilities occur due to illness during childhood followed by head injury, as well as problems during pregnancy and birth related complications. Research and Development sector needs to identify the issues and ensure early intervention to reverse the trend of growing numbers of intellectual disabilities in the country. Reverse trend is possible if we have specialised centres in place,” she said.
The Secretary said that the Working Group constituted by Planning Commission for the XII Five Year Plan observed that there is lack of opportunity for mentally ill person to ensure full recovery, inability of the family to provide adequate level of care, lack of preparedness to address differential need of such class of disability and also there is inadequate rehabilitation service available to the mentally challenged person.