CAIRO - The capacity of State-run psychiatric hospitals in Egypt is merely 3,000 beds. This explains why a large number of mentally and psychologically ill people live in the streets. According to psychiatrist Ahmed Abdel Aziz, an estimated 700,000 psychiatric patients need hospitalisation in this country. Financially capable families prefer to resort to private psychiatric clinics, since about 70 per cent of psychological diseases are curable if treated properly, as experts say. They admit, however, that the problem is aggravated by the fact that uneducated people's awareness of mental illness is inadequate. It is no secret that the stigma of mental illness prevents many families from offering a helping hand to those in need. The growing number of such patients, seen aimlessly roaming the streets, or building shabby shelters on pavements, are basically attributed to financial reasons, sociologists say. Psychiatric hospitals reportedly refuse to admit derelicts for lack of funds. According to psychiatrists, most of these tragic cases are victims of a society that has deprived them of their basic rights. They lost their psychological equilibrium because they were unable to bear the pressure of difficult circumstances or torture at the hands of the ill-reputed State Security Agency. Their most basic right, finding a bed in a specialised hospital, was denied and turned into a luxury they could not afford. Whether male or female, these disturbed individuals are recognisable by their apparent filth, long unkempt hair and erratic body language. In the downtown square of Abdel Moneim Riyad, there is a man who insists on organising the traffic amidst the sympathy of some motorists and the laughter of many others. Residents of Maadi in southern Cairo have become used to seeing Saeed walk down the streets of the quiet suburb. He claims to be 36 years old, was born in l800 and tortured by Hitler in Alexandria. Saeed, who suffers from paranoia, tells pedestrians also that he was a close friend of former president Hosni Mubarak and used to have dinner with him in his palace every day. Eid Abdalla is another mentally disturbed patient, whose presence in the streets of the populous Al Zawya el-Hamra area in Cairo is a source of trouble. Throwing stones while shouting hysterically often scares strangers, although people of the neighbourhood know Eid as an outstanding and committed secondary school student. As his sister told the Arabic-language TV and Radio magazine, Eid was the victim of a road accident that caused damage to his brain. Despite the threat he poses to himself and others, Eid is left to his own devices. “Expensive psychiatric treatment is beyond our means”, said Eid's sister, complaining that her repeated appeal to Ministry of Health officials and former Parliamentarians to find him a bed in a public hospital fell on deaf ears. Mental health problems were already known in ancient Egypt and referred to in the Ebers papyrus as ‘disordered states of concentration and attention and emotional distress in the heart and mind'. The ancient Egyptians treated such patients with magic and at times by guiding them to spiritual seclusion in temples. In the meantime, there have been efforts to propagate the notion that the afflicted must not be stigmatised. But what even specialists can hardly deny is the fact that conditions in Egyptian psychiatric institutions are in urgent need of improvement. ‘Zilal' (Shadows), a recently released documentary film, directed by Mariamme Khouri and Moustafa Hassaoui, has exposed the tragic lives of psychiatric patients and the extent of their neglect. The documentary has plainly indicted the Egyptian mental healthcare system.
