Ainur Rohmah, Semarang – Eradicating the practice of pasung, or shackling the mentally ill, in Central Java is ambitious, but can be done, according to a top official.
"The target of zero shackling cases by 2012 can be achieved if data on victims can be gathered properly," Central Java Deputy Governor Rustriningsih said.
Central Java is aiming at eliminating the practice by the end of this year, two years earlier than the Health Ministry's target of 2014.
According to the Central Java Health Agency, the reported number of people shackled in the province was 458 as of September 2011, 103 of whom were later treated in mental hospitals in Magelang, 178 in Semarang, 27 in Klaten and 118 in Surakarta. The disposition of the remainder was not specified.
The provincial health agency had to be proactive and bring reported victims and people with psychiatric problems (OMDK) to referral hospitals if West Java was to reach its goal, Rustriningsih said on Sunday.
"After data on patients has been collected through puskesmas [community health centers] and social offices in the respective districts, only then can we fetch them," she said.
Such efforts seldom received a good response from local administrations, so public healthcare service providers, community leaders and government workers had to be more attentive to the plight of the shackled.
Semarang's Amino Gondohutomo Mental Hospital's deputy director for service, Retno Dewi Suselo, said it was by no means that the relatives of the shackled would allow their sick relatives to be brought to the hospital, despite free care provided by the state's Jamkesda provincial healthcare insurance program and Jamkesmas insurance scheme for the poor.
"Sometimes we have to coax them through community leaders so the victims can be brought to the hospital," Retno said.
Families sometimes regarded mental health illness as a disgrace to be hidden, leading them to confine their relatives. A person who is shackled is typically bound to a long wooden plank, although others are confined to a single room or place.
According to the Suryani Institute for Mental Health, an NGO specializing in mental illness located in Bali, there were at least 300 mentally ill people who were currently shackled by their families on the island.
"In Buleleng and Karangasem alone we found 60 shackling cases done in homes," institute secretary Tjokorda Bagus Jaya Lesmana said.
Encep Supriandi, the director of the West Java Mental Health Hospital, said information on the number of mentally ill people in the province had not been collected properly. There were 18,800 mentally-ill people in West Java, most of whom were shackled by their families, he added.