There are mental patients at home, where can I have permanent custody?

Most of the patients in custody here are schizophrenics, and most of them are in the recovery period of their diseases. After contacting them, I found that they are different from the patients I imagined.

The producer of this sound documentary is Liu Dou, a Beijing girl: When I was a child, on my way to school, I often met an aunt who was not mentally normal. She always wore colorful clothes and walked unsteadily while swearing at the air. I'm so afraid of her that I walk around every time I see her. At that time, ordinary people's understanding of mental patients was very limited, and insulting words such as "madman" and "fool" almost became their pronouns. Even today, the mention of mental illness will still attract people's discrimination or panic. In 29, the medical journal "The Lancet" published a paper, speculating that about 17.5% of adults in China have different degrees of mental disorders. In the same year, China CDC released data, indicating that the number of people with various mental diseases in China has exceeded 1 million. What is this huge and invisible group like? What kind of life does a real mental patient live? I went to a private psychiatric care institution in Chaoyang District, Beijing, and chatted with the mental patients there.

- The following is the text version of this story -

1. Daily life of mental patients

This mental care center is located in Sujiatun Village, Chaoyang District, Beijing, surrounded by bungalows and few pedestrians, and it takes nearly half an hour's drive from the nearest subway station. Access is through a security door with access control. There are two small courtyards connected together, surrounded by bungalows and a small garden in the middle. When I arrived, I happened to catch up with Director Yang of the center to make rounds, so I walked into the patient's dormitory with her first. The scene in the dormitory suggests that you feel through audio that you had fried cakes for dinner on 2'42, which smelled delicious. Several patients said it was delicious after eating. It can be seen that the patients have a particularly good relationship with Director Yang, and casually asking "Have you eaten" is like being a family. The cats kept in the dormitory in the women's area just gave birth to kittens these two days. The patient invited us to see them. The kittens' eyes were not completely open, and they were all small and furry. One of them was a little orange cat with charming eyes, which was said to look like another cat named Mary in the yard.

psychiatric trusteeship service center located in Sujiatun Village, Chaoyang District, Beijing

Established in 1999, this psychiatric trusteeship center is the first private psychiatric rehabilitation trusteeship institution in Beijing. Huang Zheng, the founder, was a psychiatrist. At that time, he found that many mental patients returned home after discharge because they could not get good care during the rehabilitation period, which led to repeated attacks, so he established this rehabilitation trusteeship center as a "halfway house" for patients to transition from hospital to family. In 24, Dr. Huang died of a heart attack, and his wife Yang Yun began to take over the management of the center.

At present, there are about 2 patients and 4 medical staff in the center. The monthly fee for each patient is 24 yuan, including accommodation, basic medical care and various rehabilitation activities. Most of the patients in custody here are schizophrenics, and most of them are in the recovery period of the disease. After contacting them, I found that they are not the same as the patients I imagined. You can hardly feel that they are mental patients if you don't specify them.

The patients in the trusteeship center can move freely in the yard at ordinary times, chatting, enjoying the cool and killing chess.

I met a big brother with bare arms and a belly in the garden, and a grandfather next to me strongly recommended me to talk to this big brother, saying, "That fat man is very interesting, maybe you two will become friends by chatting." So I chatted with him for a while. Brother's tone is hard to understand just by reading the words. You can turn on the audio 4'14. Brother: We patients regard leaders and doctors as family, and we can joke and talk. You know that, right? There is no such concern in the hospital, saying, alas, this is the dean, so we have to get something, there is no such thing at all. You see, I am getting fat now. When I first came here, I weighed 14 kg, and now I weigh more than 2 kg. This is also related to taking medicine. If you increase your appetite, you will always want to eat it. I was very fragile when I first came here, and I was young then. I just turned 31 this year. I have been here for more than five years, and my twenties are here. Can't stand it, just stand here, howling and screaming, can't stand it. After that illusion came out, no one could stand it, and there was no way to control it.

2. "Because you are a mental patient, you will be discriminated against."

I stayed in this psychiatric care center for several days in a row, and patients who recover better here usually take on some jobs that they can. One day, I met Xiaomei who was making noodles in the kitchen. She told me that patients in all districts would make buns together later. At first, I thought she was a chef hired by the center. Later, the doctor introduced me and I realized that she was also a patient here. Xiaomei was born in 1977. She looks very young in her early forties. Before coming here, she used to be a nurse in a hospital in Beijing. I talked to her. See Audio 5'38 Xiaomei: I came here in the summer of 213, and I have been to other hospitals before. At that time, I was also depressed, and my personal emotional problems were not handled well. But not as long as this time. My initial diagnosis was paranoia, and then I was diagnosed as affective disorder before I came here. Because I didn't go well in my first year at work. At that time, I was laid off by reducing staff and increasing efficiency. And I happen to be lovelorn. I remember it very clearly. On a rainy night, I slept at home after the night shift. My mother pushed open the door and called me, saying that his parents had brought him. I can't remember anything else clearly. The only sentence is that his father said, "It's too far away, so don't associate with me in the future." Just this sentence, I didn't say anything at that time, and his father's words really hurt me. For a while afterwards, I seemed to be emotionally out of whack. In fact, I didn't want to see a doctor at that time. It was a colleague of my father who suggested that my father give me the number of an old expert. Later, I was hospitalized for no reason. This hospitalization really hurt me deeply. I lived in Huilongguan for ten months, and in Daliushu for ten months. The more I lived, the more uncomfortable I became. I wrote many letters to my mother, and the hospitalization fee was quite expensive. I may have spent nearly 1 thousand yuan in Huilongguan for ten months, and I also spent tens of thousands in Daliushu, but none of them worked. Then in July 213, I came here. I have participated in many activity groups here. When I work in the group, I can find many advantages of myself, so I don't stay there. Now I look down on many things.

I have met many patients who have recovered very well like Xiaomei in the trusteeship center. If it is not in the ward, it is difficult for you to tell whether you are a patient or a staff member. However, these patients in convalescence and stable condition will still be discriminated against.

In the first half of this year, a report about "Bread is Crazy" brought this hosting service center to public view.

In July this year, a news appeared on the Internet. The owners of a community in Baoan District of Shenzhen jointly issued an open letter, resolutely opposing the local Housing and Construction Bureau's centralized arrangement of 17 "mentally disabled families" in a security room in the same community, thinking that they would "threaten the security of the public area in the community." Although it was later learned that 15 of them were minors and autistic people, many owners still persisted.

Director Yang also told me that although many patients with stable conditions look no different from us, they are always treated with prejudice when they are labeled as "mental patients". Director Yang: For example, once we have a meeting, we can't compete with others in spirit. It is not as easy to carry out activities as others. For example, autistic children or "retarded" children are cute, easy to package and publicize. But mental patients can't do it, because our patients are quite old. Whenever there is any activity, say that mental patients can't participate, for fear of accidents, then there is nothing you can do. In fact, mental patients are more pitiful than other disabled people, and we mental patients don't talk about it. Instead, he is willing to close himself up for fear that others will know. He will feel ashamed or inferior.

Third, paranoid patients with two "fiancé es"

Most of the patients in the rehabilitation center are schizophrenics. Schizophrenia is a common severe mental illness both in China and in the world. This disease often occurs in young people, which may lead to lifelong disability and affect the patient's life. The main symptoms are insanity, delusion, auditory hallucination, hallucination, abnormal thinking and behavior, decreased emotional expression and so on. However, insisting on taking medicine can obviously alleviate the symptoms of most patients and greatly reduce the recurrence rate of the disease. Generally speaking, the earlier the treatment, the better the prognosis.

Wang Dafu from the center told me that the patients who have recovered well here have not had obvious symptoms for more than ten years. However, I also met a patient whose recovery was not ideal. He first got sick in prison, and he still has very serious delusional symptoms until today because the treatment was not timely enough. Director Yang told me his story. Director Yang: I have a German journalist friend named Katrina. At that time, I brought her to interview, and this patient took a fancy to her. He asked me to hook him up and he wanted to marry her. He said, "You must tell Katrina that I love her to death! Tell her to call me quickly, I have 1 million. " I said yes, yes, and I promised him. Then that Katrina was also very interesting, so I told her about it, and she said, "OK, I'll go and see who he is." She came again. I told the patient, this is a foreign friend, you can't be too, uh, anything. As a result, after she left, he forgot all the things I warned, and said, "You have to call her!

Later, I met the patient mentioned by Director Yang. Now, he has shifted his target and has another object who wants to get married. This time, his delusional fiancee is a female patient who is also in the center. I suggest you turn on the audio 14'36 Patient: Let me tell you something. My family sent 3, yuan to that dream girl to marry me, you know? I'm an egg, you know? Never married! Our family will say that it's over if you marry Meng Dai! Say what to eat, please eat braised beef! Said to let you do it, well, I'd rather tear down ten temples than break a marriage, right!

Wang Dafu told me that every mental patient's condition is different. Some people can get obvious improvement after treatment and drug control, while others are not very optimistic about the prognosis. Therefore, after the diagnosis and treatment in the hospital, how to take care of the patients scientifically in the rehabilitation stage is a very difficult problem for many family members: it is difficult to ensure that these mental patients are always in a stable state outside the hospital or rehabilitation institutions. There are indeed too many uncertainties in this. One question is whether family members, as guardians, can let patients take medicine on time and in quantity as in medical or rehabilitation institutions; Another is that people with mental illness are particularly susceptible. It is difficult to predict how long a patient will last. They, a special group, should be accepted and warmed by the society and family. However, after returning to the family seriously, some uncertain factors may appear, which makes the disease easy to relapse and more difficult to recover. Our institution is a foster care and rehabilitation institution for mental illness, not a medical institution. In the nearly 2 years since its establishment, there are indeed too many patients who have been recovering and living here, and their condition is relatively stable, and there is basically no recurrence.

In the background of the photo, there is a bakery that produces "crazy bread", and in the photo frame, there is a group photo of "bakers" | Liu Dou

Fourth, the predicament and development of the psychiatric rehabilitation trusteeship center

Because mental illness is easy to recur, it is necessary to take medicine on time and in quantity, which requires careful care, and it is difficult for many family members to provide professional care for patients. However, the social function of patients who have just been discharged from hospital has declined, and they cannot adapt to society, work and life completely like ordinary people. This makes the "halfway house" connecting hospitals and families particularly important.

Unfortunately, there is no such public rehabilitation trust institution in Beijing so far, and private institutions are in short supply. This institution has taken in more than 2 mental patients, and new patients are put on the waiting list every month. In order to alleviate the financial pressure of patients' families, the center only charges 2,4 yuan per person per month, so long as the basic operation can be guaranteed, the price will not increase.

However, they have not received substantial help from relevant departments in their operations, and even have to face many difficulties. Because of the policy of deconstructing the functions of the capital, the places currently rented by the trusteeship center have to be vacated. The vacating of houses can be understood as a kind of "new demolition", which means that the public-owned collective houses are taken back by the state. Because it was a rented house, the center was not subsidized in this process, and Director Yang was forced to find a suitable place for these 2 mental patients in a very short time. In addition, even the application for welfare institutions, the center has also been hampered, and eventually it will go away. You can listen to audio 21'

about this experience of being "kicked the ball" by the relevant institutions. In addition, how to return to society for mental patients in convalescence has always been an important topic. Director Yang said that they had visited the "Freshmen Rehabilitation Association" in Hong Kong: Director Yang: They were established in more than six years, 5 years earlier than us. But their initial process is also very difficult, which is a process to go. The buildings in their center are all given by the government and supported by the foundation, and they are doing very well now.

Hong Kong has adopted a linkage scheme that is in line with international standards for the rehabilitation of mental patients. The Social Welfare Department of Hong Kong provides different types of accommodation and basic medical care for patients. Meanwhile, in 21, the Hong Kong Hospital Authority implemented the "Easy Home Settlement Scheme" to provide intensive rehabilitation training for psychiatric patients with the ability to return to community life. Patients can choose to work in sheltered factories, produce handbags, etc., or make coffee or grow organic vegetables, and then take them to the supporting stores in subway stations for sale.

At the end of the interview, I chatted with Director Yang about the news mentioned before. I want to know what she thinks of the fact that the owners boycotted 17 families with mental disabilities and concentrated on living in the same community. As a mental illness care worker for many years, Director Yang told me her ultimate dream of establishing a semi-open community for mental patients. For details, please listen to audio 24'25. Director Yang: I can also understand that this resident refuses to have mental patients in the building. I think that's really understandable, because when he comes home, if he keeps thinking about a mental patient next to him and what to do if he gets sick, he may not sleep well. I have a big dream, that is, whether we can make a rehabilitation community. Because it is a community, it can be more socialized, for example, there are restaurants, laundries, libraries, cinemas, vegetable markets, supermarkets and medical institutions, and then patients live in this community, self-sufficient, get a job and contribute their own strength. But at the same time, because they are mental patients, they should be supervised, rehabilitation files should be established, medicine should be punched in, and doctors should evaluate patients regularly. Volunteers also