Bharat Vatwani enjoys the gift of a clear sense of purpose in life, and the belief that he is connected to a larger meaning gives him enormous strength.

The Mumbai-based psychiatrist, who is a recipient of Ramon Magsaysay Award 2018 and runs Shraddha Rehabilitation Foundation at Karjat, on the outskirts of Mumbai, which has been working relentlessly to rescue and rehabilitate mentally ill persons wandering on the roads and unite them with their families, was in the city recently. His organisation has so far reunited nearly 10,000 mentally ill destitute on the roads with their families.

Sharing a few gut-wrenching tales with Rashtra News, he recalled how he met his first patient in the streets of Mumbai in 1988. “I was sitting with my wife in a restaurant and we saw a haggard looking man with long matted hair talking to himself across the street. He suddenly dipped an empty coconut shell into a roadside drain and drank that water in one shot. We were so moved that without thinking about any legal implications, we reached out to him with an offer to help. He agreed to come with us to our small five-bed nursing home.”

Dr. Vatwani and his wife Smita, also a psychiatrist, were delighted to see him respond to their treatment. “He spoke good English and told us he was a graduate with a B. Sc Diploma in Medical Lab Technology and had come to Mumbai for a job. He did not get a job but he was afflicted with mental illness,” he recounts, informing that he wrote to his father, who was a Zilla Parishad Superintendent in Kadapa district of Andhra Pradesh. “The elated father took the next flight and came rushing to us.”

The couple realised that rehabilitation of mentally ill was an important issue left unexplored even by social organisations. They started taking up similar cases and the initial success propelled the drive forward with greater impetus.

Challenges galore

In an attempt to meet the challenges of a severe dearth of mental health professionals, poor awareness, lack of treatment and care and stigma and discrimination which contribute further to the hardships of the afflicted population, they established Shraddha Rehabilitation Foundation, which soon became the destination for the unclothed, unfed, uncared and untreated roadside wandering mentally ill destitute.

Quoting national statistics, he says there are 18 lakh homeless people and of them, almost 50%-60% suffer mental illness. “We can assume that almost 10 lakh mentally ill people are on roads and I have so far reached out to only 10,000 of them,” he laments.

The passion to put others to comfort comes from his own ‘disturbed’ childhood. His father died when he was a school boy and the mother being a home maker, he, along with his brothers, sold posters of celebrities, ran a circulating library and went door-to-door selling books for a commission. “I could relate with the problems of most of my patients,” he says.

Adopting a multi-pronged approach

Reaching out to the hapless population stripped of all human dignity, the Shraddha Foundation adopted a multi-pronged approach by assisting the mentally ill off the streets, giving them shelter, care and treatment and reuniting them with their families besides taking up activities for public awareness.

The biggest challenge, he says, came in 1995-96 when the local residents of Dahisar in Mumbai, where the couple built 20-bed psychiatric institution, opposed to their plan and moved the court, which after a prolonged battle, gave its verdict Dr. Vatwani’s favour.

Inspired by social worker Baba Amte’s “Anandvan” near Nagpur for the leprosy afflicted, the Vatwani couple established the second branch at Karjat on the outskirts of Mumbai in 2006.

Having gained expertise in uniting the patients with their families, his organisation now works in collaboration with 42 NGOs and State mental health institutions across the country. “We pick up partially or fully treated patients from mental hospitals and NGOs and unite them with their families through our network of volunteers who come from all parts of the country.

Dr. Vatwani says the families’ joy and elation on seeing their loved ones keeps them going. “Goodness spreads in ripples. We don’t know where the end point of that ripple will reach. Its just that one should not lose hope in the power of goodness,” he emphasises.