The outpatients’ room, MH-6, is sunlit and quiet even though the corridor outside is chock-a-block. A man in his 50s walks in. The air thickens with his high-pitched rapid-fire monologue. A dozen odd patients and attendants rush to witness the spectacle. The middle-aged man from Mysore is proclaiming he is ‘like God’, ‘he could do anything’. But for Dr Sanjeev Jain, placid and empathetic, he is just one of the many patients who need to be admitted to the hospital. Promptly, he is sent for emergency admission.
One in three households will have some kind of mental illness; one in six households will have a serious mental illness that will require hospitalisation for more than two weeks, is the projection for India in three years.
