why Greeshma Foundation was formed

A happy family, father a well-respected teacher, mother a happy housewife, me doing B-Tech in CUSAT and my only sister a school topper and winner of national merit scholarship & couple of state level awards. All going well until 1988, suffered a setback after sister began showing signs of mental depression when she was about 14 years. As she was good in studies, more expectations pounded on her from the society, family and relatives, but she could not handle that pressure of expectations, her academic performance started going down. She could not get through the entrance exams for any professional courses, which the society wanted her to pursue. May be due to frequent failures in exams and mismanagement of internal stress / external pressures, she gradually became mentally ill, definitely because of lack of proper treatment also.

It shook the entire family. I was also disturbed throughout my BTech course and in my initial jobs in India then in Singapore. I decided to discontinue the Singapore Job in 1994 and returned home just for sharing the family’s trauma and supporting my parents in dealing with her.  

That time, the psychiatric treatment was not that much effective in our place, doctors prescribe medicines, but as usual the patients not interested in taking them regularly, eventually patients never get better. When the patients become violent or out of control, they are forced to admit in any of the mental asylums. Even if they are cured, the existing stigma against mental illness make rehabilitation more complex in our society. Most of them are nick-named as “mad people” throughout their life. 

I spent time researching on mental illness, just for my sister, by discussing with different doctors in Kerala, but nothing improved, and the status quo continues for a long time. Once visited NIMHANS in Bangalore, but they did not recommend bringing patients from far as curing takes many years.  

After several years, we came to know about an organization called SCARF in Chennai, they treated her, which finally improved her conditions and she learned at least how to manage the illness. Apart from medicines, their treatment included regular counselling, rehabilitation, and training. There we realized that mental treatment is not just medication, more important is counselling, rehabilitation training and love & care from family and society. After about 6 months of treatment in SCARF, we were advised to return to Kerala and continue with same course of treatment under regular consultation with any local psychiatrist.

In our place, we could not find any good psychiatric day care rehabilitation center, not even in nearby districts, which made me start dreaming to have such center on our own. Such center will benefit several other patients also in our society. We started discussing with a few psychiatrists with this type of treatment methodology, but everybody discouraged advising this as a risky project. Later we came to know about MHAT (an initiative by Dr Manoj Kumar in Calicut) a renowned mental health organization with a concept of treatment driven by community-based volunteers. MHAT also follow similar type of treatment methodology.                                                                                                                                                                                

In 2013, I opted to join the Qatar Operations of my company, which helped me to have some savings, and finally started the Greeshma Foundation in 2015 in my hometown, with medical support provided by MHAT doctors and psychiatric social workers. In Greeshma we follow MHAT policy of treating patients only from financially poor families. The foundation is a labour of love for me and my family. I hope you will also help us remove the stigma against mental illness and make the world a better place for the people who are suffering.