The Supreme Court on Monday asked the States to respond on a study conducted by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) for setting up adequate mental asylums in the country and to upgrade the existing ones.
With inadequate human resource, financial crunch and lack of medical facilities cited as the major bottlenecks by the NHRC, the Bench of Justices KS Radhakrishnan and Pinaki Chandra Ghose asked all States to file their response to the suggestions given by the apex human rights body.
For NHRC, advocate Shobha said that hospitals catering to mental health patients faced serious financial constraints. “The Centre and state Governments should accord priority in allocation of financial resources both for the regular maintenance and the upgradation of the physical infrastructure of these institutions,” the NHRC report said.
Most of the mental hospitals were over a century old and they do not receive the same priority as general health. It demanded each State and Union Territory to have one mentalhealth hospital fully equipped with latest equipment and sufficient medical and paramedical staff. Such hospitals must be made autonomous, NHRC said.