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Faisal Ahmed in Srinagar
Prolonged exposure to violence has frayed the nerves of the average Kashmiri and triggered serious psychiatric disorders in thousands of traumatised people.
During the past year alone, 36,000 desperate patients have visited Kashmir's only psychiatric hospital.
This is an appalling number given the fact that just five years ago not more than 1,700 patients came for medical advice to this hospital.
The phenomenal increase in the number of patients seeking help, according to Dr Mushtaq Banihali of the Srinagar Psychiatric Hospital, can be attributed to the protracted bloodshed in Jammu and Kashmir, where insurgency broke out in 1989 and has so far claimed 30,000 lives.
"The very sight of human bodies and victims of a grenade attack crying in pain and soaked in blood is enough to trigger a psychological turmoil in a normal person," said Banihali.
Srinagar's Psychiatric Hospital, however, is ill equipped to cope with such a patient rush.
"The hospital, which has not been improved since 1970, has facilities to cope with just a few hundred patients," Banihali said.
"The patient pressure is too much for the staff and the infrastructure facilities of the hospital to cope with," he added.
The conditions in the hospital are also appalling.
A few years ago, seven inmates died of extreme cold, as the hospital heater wasn't working. The situation today is also not very different.
"There are a large number of patients, especially women, who come to me with numerous psychosomatic ailments," said Banihali, who has also been getting several such patients at his private clinic.
"Hysteria, insomnia, non-organic heart palpitation, anxiety, schizophrenia, behavioural disorders, stress, hallucinations being some of the common complaints among such patients," he said.
A survey conducted recently by the sociology department of Kashmir University also related psychological disorders among local women to late marriages and lack of recreational avenues.
The survey listed insecurity, unemployment and tension as the main causes for mental ailments among men.
Indo-Asian News Service
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