We quote below from the evaluation report of an organizational review conducted by one of our donor agencies (October 5th to 7th, 2004). The reviewers conducted a SWOT analysis with the Center’s staff. A brief report…

Strengths:

1. Bapu looks at mental illness from a rights perspective rather than the widely practiced pharmacological and medical perspective.

2. Bapu looks at people with mental illness moving forward from just being functional to being completely healed. They are a healing institution rather than a place for treatment.

3. Bapu’s proposed interventions are backed by painstaking research…

4. Bapu’s publications are excellent in the way they demystify and demedicalize complex mental health issues without over simplifying them.

5. Bapu takes an ideological position on not accepting funds from pharmaceutical companies. This will greatly reduce chances of co-optation.

6. The research undertaken by Bapu has given them an insight into the mental health needs and their programmes are planned as a response. However, Bapu does not see itself as indefinitely implementing programmes. Also, their work has the long term goal of influencing policy.

7. The trustees as well as staff comprise of users and survivors of psychiatry, and this is a crucial aspect as most organizations working on the issue of mental health tend to look at people with mental illness as passive recipients of treatment rather than active participants in their own recovery and healing.

8. Bapu takes a clear and unambiguous stand on invasive procedures such as ECT, and forced drugging. They believe in informed consent and self determination”.

Challenges:

1. Bapu’s non-psychiatric approach coupled with its criticism of the Anti-Superstition movement (Andhashraddha) could be misconstrued as an anti-science and anti-rational approach. Given the hegemony of medical science, that is more interested in the mechanisms of disease rather than the experience or the causes, any “non-science” intervention in the health field is at odds with conventional medical thought. The other aspect is also that alternative institutions and healers could also be as exploitative. Bapu will need to walk a fine line on this issue.

2. Working with a regressive and custodial law in mental health will pose a challenge.

3. Informed consent and self-determination are issues that could prove to be very challenging in the mental health context.