Vicious act against a marginalized sector

I first heard of the plan to sell the Welfareville property in early 2002. The compound is the site of the National Center for Mental Health (NCMH), more known to the public as the Mental Hospital. The NCMH has been providing treatment, care and rehabilitation for the mentally ill since its establishment on Dec. 17, 1928. It is the only national mental health facility in the country that provides vital hospital services to mental patients. It caters mostly to the poor and marginalized who come not only from Metro Manila but also from far-flung provinces.

Recently, the planned sale of Welfareville was resurrected by Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman’s announcement of the public bidding of the 118-hectare land in July 2012. The plan threatens to displace over 6,340 NCMH in-patients, around 59,000 out-patients every year, 1,981 hospital personnel and 25,000 families who have long settled in the area. According to Armando Palaganas, vice president of the NCMH Employees Association-Alliance of Health Workers, rumor has it that the institution is going to be transferred to a much smaller 10-hectare underdeveloped land in Inarawan, Antipolo.

I have never been a beneficiary of NCMH, but I have been a mental health patient for the longest time and I am deeply enraged by this policy of systematic gross negligence of the people’s health, including public mental health.

The dismal health budget allocation for a Filipino is a far cry from what the World Health Organization prescribes. We are being driven to fend for ourselves as the government abandons its obligations to us by promoting privatization. The decentralization of health services in the Philippines has also made public health care a money-making enterprise for the government. It is the state’s mandate to accord its citizens access to health services. If the Aquino administration indeed claims to be of sound reason, then it should protect the welfare of this sector that has long been marginalized.

Mental health patients are not hopeless. Without government support, however, most are likely to become helpless. I myself would not have afforded my medicines during the early stages of my illness had it not been for the medical assistance provided by Bayan Muna Party List. I was diagnosed with Bipolar Mood Disorder, more commonly known as Manic Depression, at the age of 22. It is a mental illness triggered by deep-seated traumas of growing up in a highly dysfunctional home and sexual abuses during childhood and puberty. I have been undergoing therapy and taking medications for the last nine years. Through my benefactors’ help, I have been renewed and reintegrated into society. I have pursued post graduate studies in UP, worked as college professor in a prestigious exclusive school, a trainer at the biggest call center in the world, a program host, and a model. To date, I have been serving as a speech writer, an animal welfare advocate, and a paralegal volunteer for a human rights organization. I even got my own family. I have come so far for someone who has been set up for failure by the current social system because of my mental disability.

We may be deranged in various levels of mental stability but we remain people who have constitutional rights to be respected. Many of us have acquired our illnesses not because of our own doing in the first place. We are mere victims of the society’s own wretchedness. The brutalities around us are enough to drive anyone crazy. No ordinary man can grasp the idea of how much mentally impaired people struggle to keep their sanity intact, how to deal with discrimination and social bigotry, and how to lead normal lives despite our condition. Most of those afflicted with mental health problems oftentimes suffer in silence for fear of being ostracized.

Remarkably enough, a lot of us are even more productive and humane than the so-called “regular” individuals. A fellow Bipolar friend of mine who got a Master’s degree teaches in a public elementary school and, out of patriotism, continuous to decline offers to work abroad for higher pay. Another acquaintance even became a college dean in UP. We are living examples that people like us, when given the chance of rehabilitation, become vibrant and significant contributors to nation-building. This is the opportunity I want for other patients to have—a chance to get their lives back.

Bayan Muna Rep. Teddy Casiño filed last September a bill and a resolution that aim to stop altogether the sale of the Welfareville property. House Bill No. 5257 seeks to repeal Republic Act 5260, the law signed in 1968 by then President Ferdinand Marcos authorizing the public bidding of the property to generate funds supposedly for “children’s welfare services.” House Resolution No. 1700, also of Casiño, directs the Committee on Health to conduct an inquiry, in aid of legislation, on the “misdirected planned sale of the Welfareville Property.”

Let us support all efforts to oppose this planned denial of services to mental health patients and their families. The morality of a country can be judged by how it treats those who are in need. It is an act of viciousness to disenfranchise those who cannot fight back. It is time to put some sense in some of these government officials’ irrational minds.

Janice S. Cambri is a Bayan Muna volunteer.