Bindiya returns home after wandering on the streets for 10 years!
Bindiya was found on the streets of Birubari area in Guwahati. The public called to report a mentally disturbed women behaving in a socially unacceptable manner.
The rescue team brought her to the Transit Care center of Navachetana, a rehabilitation home for homeless women with mental illness. She was so disturbed that she tried to run away the minute she was brought to the home.
She was enrolled in the home and given a bath and a change of clothes. In her early days at the home, Bindiya used to stay unkempt. She would keep muttering to herself. She carried a pile of garbage that she wasn't willing to part with.
Once she settled down, she was sent for medical examination. She was diagnosed with Chronic Schizophrenia. The home then started pharmacotherapy for her.
In the initial days, Bindiya was irritable. Psycho-therapeutic sessions failed as she would present a guarded attitude and not cooperate. Sometimes she would walk out from the room. She remained emotionally and socially withdrawn. It was a challenge to communicate with her.
She would even refrain from maintaining basic personal hygiene and lacked toilet habits. The staff had to constantly prod her to carry out activities of daily living.
Over time as her therapy continued, her active symptoms of mental illness reduced. She was then shifted to her second phase of rehabilitation..
She started to get involved in household chores that required sharing responsibilities. This helped in her socialization skills. She learnt jute work that helped in refining her fine motor skills.
The therapists noted that her sense of responsibility was very high. She would never leave a job unfinished. Her social and motor skills were honed by giving her responsibilities that required her to supervise other residents. From being non cooperative, she soon started taking care of other residents.
Over a few months of therapy and workshops Bindiya recovered her memory. She remembered that she was from Jirrah village of Bankura district, West Bengal.
Ashadeep then initiated a plan for her reintegration with her family. When the reintegration team reached Bindiya place, the entire community gathered to welcome her.
The team learnt that she had been suffering from psychiatric illness for almost 30 years. Though they had initially sought treatment, they had to discontinue it as they couldn't afford it. One day she disappeared from home and over the years they had come to believe that she must have died while wandering on the streets.
Her husband and children were at a loss of words to express their emotions.
Bindiya had accepted her illness as her life dictation. It was due to Ashadeep tireless determination that she was finally home after 10 long years!
Today, she continues to get therapy and medication so she can have a normal life.
Your help can transform many more lives like those of Bindiya. You can donate so that underprivileged patients suffering from mental illness can receive therapy and be rehabilitated. You can give with confidence because every program listed is GIVEASSURED.
By donating to this program
you will be sponsoring the overall costs incurred to support the beneficiaries
What the beneficiary gets
Program Description
The Navachetana home run by Ashadeep rescues women with mental health issues. The home provides them with shelter, food, and medical care. They also assist in their reintegration with their families wherever possible.
Donation to this program cover the cost of food for a day for the residents in the Navchetana transit home. Close to 30 residents stay in the home.
Navachetana was started as an attempt to rehabilitate the mentally affected homeless women living on the streets of Guwahati. 355 women have been rescued and rehabilitated by Ashadeep till now.
Homeless women from the street with mental illness are admitted either by Ashadeep team and volunteers, or directly by the police, or are referred by the State Home for Women or other shelter homes/organizations.
An initial assessment and certification is done by the psychiatrist and a record is filed at the nearest police station of the rescue.
They are give medical treatment as well as therapy. The Rehabilitation process involves assessment at each stage:
One to one counseling for identifying home and background.
Assessment of clinical condition
Assessment of living skills on the basis of which individual plans are developed
Assessment of vocational skills for livelihood
Occupational activity with various vocations such as household work, kitchen, gardening, needlework, knitting, jute work, music & dance and therapeutic work activity.
If the family of the patient is traced, the home initiates reintegration. The patient is discharged only when they achieve a minimum living skills criteria. If the family does not come to Navachetana to pick up the residents, then the staff accompany the resident to her house to reunite them.
The team maintains communication with the family through phone. They obtain authenticity through photographs of family members. Once reunited with family, the case is closed at the police station where the original entry was made.
If a woman does not have a family or her home cannot be traced but she becomes functional, then she is re-integrated into Homes run either by the government or Civil Society Organizations.
In some cases, where the disability due to the illness is very severe and information regarding the woman's whereabouts cannot be traced at all, she remains with Ashadeep.
When you donate to this program, you help women suffering from mental illness the nourishment that is very important f or their recovery.
Ashadeep
Program Updates
5 October, 2021
Rehebilitation intervention continues against the challenges of Covid 19 Pandemic
#5
Activities and work undertaken in the last 5-6 months
Throughout the pandemic, all precautionary measures have been taken to ensure that the residents and staffs at the homes are healthy and free from the threat of contracting COVID19. Structured and specific guidelines were mandatorily followed and some of the measures taken are: Monitoring and Evaluation :• Weekly monitoring of the vital parameters such as temperature, pulse rate, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation of the residents and staff were done under the supervision of the Psychiatric Nurse and a Health Care Staff. • Monitoring for any signs and symptoms suggestive of Covid 19 was done regularly for the residents and the residential staff. • Rapid Antigen Testing was done for residents and staff of Ashadeep. Also, any residents and residential staff showing any flulike symptoms were screened at the nearest COVID Screening Centre. CLEANING AND DISINFECTION: • Frequent sanitization of the campus including office rooms, dining hall, residents room, kitchen, using sodium hypochlorite solution (every alternate day). • Checklist of the disinfection process was maintained.
Challenges faced and next steps
With the ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, our regular admissions and discharge in the Rehabilitation Homes for Homeless persons with mental illness have been affected for the past one and a half years. Admissions were done following stringent COVID protocols. Similarly, the reintegration of the 'ready for discharge residents' was put on hold due to the inter/intrastate travel restrictions by the Government. All these measures were taken to ensure the health and safety of the patients and staff. However, as the restrictions got slightly eased, few reintegration were done within the state from January to May 2021. From the last week of May 2021, restrictions were imposed again due to the second wave of the covid pandemic.During Jan - June 2021, 71 homeless women and men with mental illness received rehabilitation intervention at the homes. There were 11 admissions and 13 re-integrations during this period.
Stories from the ground
Impact story: 35 yrs old Salma Nasim was brought to Ashadeep on 29/07/2020 by the One-Stop Centre (OSC), Guwahati. On assessment, Salma was diagnosed with Schizophrenia exhibiting positive symptoms of hallucinatory behaviour like self-talking, self-smiling, self-muttering along with poor eye contact, and guarded behaviour, lack of speech output, and impaired insight and judgement. Within 4 months of her admission, there was significant improvement noticed inward behaviour, positive symptoms, social skills and level of functionality with various psychiatric interventions. She also developed her insight on her illness and improvement in cognitive functions. Gradually, Salma was able to provide a clear history of her illness, how the illness affected her due to the relapse in medication and how it lead her to the journey on the streets. She could provide a definite home address in Raigarh, Chhattisgarh. With the help of networking with various organizations and Raigarh Police, Salma’s detail of her family members could be traced. But due to restrictions on public transportation for the Covid 19 pandemic Salma’s reintegration was on hold for a period of time. During this time, Salma was in contact with her family members over a telephonic conversation. Finally, fighting all odds, Salma was reunited with her family at the Howrah Railway Station, West Bengal on 7th April 2021. This was possible with the immense support from the family members who agreed to come up to Howrah station to receive her.
23 March, 2021
Refreshing moments of the residents post lockdown
#4
Since the Nationwide Lockdown due to Covid-19 crisis in March 2020, Admission and Re-integration were suspended from the last part of March. The primary reason for suspension of Admission was not to put the residents at any risk of contamination from newcomers/outsiders as most of them do not have the capacity to understand about ‘social distancing’, ‘sanitization’ etc. Re-integration had to be suspended as there was no public transport available for the trips. During this period, there were 75 homeless persons (36 women + 39 men) with mental illness were residing at the two homes.
From July 2020, admissions started taking place though in a very slow pace taking all precautions. The admissions came either from Police stations or District administrations after testing the homeless persons with mental illness for Covid negative and keeping them quarantined for a specific period. Starting from July till this date of reporting, 13 admissions took place (3 men + 10 women) and 18 persons have been discharged (8 men + 10 women) and re-integrated with their families.
On 19th December a fun filled programme “Felicity 2K20” was organized by a few Interns at Udayan. Various sports activities were conducted which was followed by a cultural event. The residents had a lot of enjoyment on that day.
On 25th December, the residents of the two homes ‘Udayan’ and ‘Navachetana’ celebrated Christmas. One resident dressed like Santa Claus and distributed candies amongst his fellow residents. The celebrations were complete with cutting of Christmas Cake, singing songs and dance in the tunes of Bollywood numbers.
5 July, 2020
Transformation - from the street to a life with dignity
#3
Transformation - from the street to a life with dignity
A total of 16 homeless persons (7 women and 9 men) with mental illness were admitted during October to December 2019. 71 residents were there in the 'Navachetana' home for women and 'Udayan' home for men during that quarter. 15 persons (8 women and 7 men) were discharged during the quarter and re-integrated with their families in places such as Assam, Nagaland, West Bengal, Bihar and Chattisgarh.
19 November, 2019
The happiness amidst hardships
#2
The happiness amidst hardships
22 July, 2019
#1
Program Update
11 homeless women and 7 homeless men with mental illness have been rescued from the streets and admitted at the Rehabilitation home in the last quarter i.e. January-March 2019. 9 women and 10 men have been discharged during this period and reintegrated with their families in Assam, Nepal, West Bengal and Bihar. 3 women have been shifted to the Home run by Missionaries of Charity. All these discharged women and men have sufficiently recovered and their functional level have improved a lot. Three of the discharged women have stayed in Ashadeep’s Home for 2 years, 6 years and 7 years respectively.
Story from the field
Bimla Kaur was brought to Ashadeep’s Free Psychiatric Outdoor Clinic by her elder sister in October 2009. Bimla was about 19 years at that time. She was showing symptoms like fearfulness, lack of insight and sleeplessness. Her sister informed that Bimla is a victim of physical torture by their mentally ill mother who becomes very violent at times and beats her children. Bimla’s elder sister goes to work who has to feed the entire family and hence there is no one at home to take care on Bimla. Hence Bimla was referred for admission at Ashadeep’s Rehabilitation home for homeless women with mental illness. She was provided with psychiatric treatment as well as psycho-social interventions. Within a few months, Bimla recovered from her illness and started participating in the household activities along with her co-residents. Although Bimla had recovered from her illness, she hardly used to speak with anyone, but her non verbal expressions were normal. After about 14 months Bimla was sent back home in January 2011 with an advice to continue her treatment and medication from Ashadeep’s Psychiatric OPD. For more than a year, Bimla regularly came to the OPD for follow up and collect her medicines. Then in July 2013, city police rescued Bimla from a busy street loitering aimlessly with signs of mental illness and she was re-admitted in Ashadeep’s Home. Bimla’s sister was informed who came and narrated the same story and expressed her helplessness to take care of Bimla. This time, it was decided that Bimla will not go back home and continue to live in Ashadeep’s Rehabilitation Home. Bimla used to be actively involved in almost all activities of the Home but hardly used to speak with anyone. In 2017, Ashadeep had created a provision of ‘Shared Housing’ for those residents who cannot go back home but have recovered sufficiently and are fully functional. A group of 5 residents were made to reside in a house as one family along with one staff for monitoring their medications. They were free to decide on their day-to-day living and do anything they feel like. Bimla was shifted in one such ‘Shared Home’. Within 1-2 months, drastic changes were observed in Bimla’s behavior. She started communication with anyone visiting their ‘home’ and her disability level also improved a lot. Her co-residents were employed outside Ashadeep’s facilities and used to go out to their workplace everyday. Seeing them, Bimla expressed her willingness to work and earn a livelihood. Accordingly, Bimla was facilitated a job in a packaging industry. She now attends her workplace along with her co-residents. Bimla has her PAN Card made, a savings account opened in Bank and her salary gets transferred to her account. As soon as she will complete one year service, she will be covered under PF and ESIC by her employer. Bimla has attained a new lease of her life and is enjoying a lot.
| What is the expected total number of beneficiaries in this program for FY18-19? | 115 |
| What is the number of beneficiaries/ benefits provided in this program, Year-To-Date | 112 |
| Village/City/State where project is located | Bamunigaon/Assam |
| Total Budget for the project for FY18-19 | 1344000 |
| Total Expenses for the project YTD | 1284835 |
