NCMH

Yesterday, our class had a one in a lifetime experience of going to the National Center for Mental Health as our exposure trip for our course. I almost didn't get to join 'em since I woke up late. Good thing our professor told me it was okay if I headed straight to NCMH. So after my morning rituals, I drove all the way to Mandaluyong with my mom (since I didn't know how to get to NCMH) and waited for my class to arrive there and rejoin 'em.

My first impression of NCMH was that it looked gloomy. It wasn't just because it was raining hard yesterday, but it just felt sad there. We first went to the Pavilion 2, where the male patients were, and it was sad to see some of the patients there. Most of them were ostracized from their community and were even abandoned by their families. Even if some of them have improved and are considered well enough to go back to their normal lives, their families still do not claim them. I guess their families are just embarrassed with them and don't want anything to do with them, so the only thing they can think of is leaving them there, like they're throwing out the trash from their homes. It's that mentality and ignorance that infuriates me. How could these people just leave their loved ones like that? I mean they should be placing the person in NCMH's care because they love that person, not because they want to get rid of them. Grabe lang.

What also made me sad was when we were walking around the pavilion and seeing the many patients walking in the grounds or locked up in their rooms, you could really see that they were happy to see us. You could see their eyes light up when they saw new people in their environment, and our reaction to this was to greet them and shake hands with them (at least I did). You might be wondering why I'm telling you that seeing them like this makes me sad. It's mainly because of the way I saw them being handled. The rooms were dirty. They didn't have any beds. Some rooms didn't have any space at all. To put it bluntly, it was like a jail. A jail for the mentally ill. I'm not blaming NCMH. I mean they are probably doing the best they can. It's just that the government doesn't pay too much attention to these people. Being a government-owned institution, they are funded by the country, but how can they take good care of the patients when the budget for NCMH gets slashed every year? It makes you think how amidst the problems that our nation is currently having, the plan for action for it goes to the menial ones (like transferring Gloria to the Veteran's Hospital). Our government should have its priorities straight. Heck, our president should get his priorities straight. Rather than trying to make the people like him with PR, he should just do his damn job. It's also not right for the administration to fight with the supreme court. How can you lead people and make them believe in your credibility, when you start conflicts with your own people. The government should be unified in their actions and decisions. Hay nako. Pumunta na sa politics yung kwento ko. Haha. Anyway, what I said is just my opinion.


NCMH really tugged hard on my heartstrings. It really made me sad seeing them like that. Especially in the female pavilion when one of them asked us if we could text a certain number she was stating to us. We asked her whom that number belonged to and she said that it was her mother. "December 8 na kase. Malapit na mag-Pasko. Wala akong kasama dito." I really wanted to hug her. Make her feel secure. What kind of a world we live in where families abandon their loved ones and the ones who take good care of 'em are the ones who don't even have any relations with them. Ba't kaya ganun? I hope NCMH improves its facilities. I guess the only way for that to happen is if the government improves itself first.