Chronic mental disorders’ treatments in Bali tend to use the typical hospital-based, mental health institution approach. These institutions are psychiatry wards in general hospitals or, in rural areas, sections of community healthcare centres collaborating with the general hospitals. The absence of such interventional providence has in part contributed to a number of untreated outpatients were abandoned, kept under restrains, chained or in makeshift cages by their families.
“I am in tears seeing this reality happened in the island that most people known as paradise, where money is not a problem in the tourism point of view”, said Karim Maatem as another French freelance journalist that willing to uncover the humiliating reality for Bali’s government that unwilling to make the change for their people. As he joined Professor Luh Ketut Suryani and her remarkable community mental health team walking to a deep inside of a dusty village with hardly ever running water in the area had made him more understand of the discrimination and human right violation for the Balinese people.
The team had found a 52 years male that had been chained for 7 years in the very remote area where no health provider willing to walk in. “I am thrill with the courage of Professor Suryani to finding all the people in chained that had been hidden for many years and had been abandon by their own government”, add Karim as he agree to make her a hero in the name of humanity. “As a professor she is not just sitting at her office waiting for report from somebody else or just providing service at her comfort office but she willing to step out from her normal life to deliver her compassion and love for all the fortunate Balinese people that she can find”, said Dr Cokorda Bagus Jaya Lesmana as he help to documented the remarkable works of Professor Suryani in the community. A community mental health model has been showed and developed in the peaceful island Bali that offers a fair and effective service to the population
