Indonesian mental facilities have gained poor reputations for keeping their patients in appalling facilities and living conditions.
As you’ll view below, some patients are chained in cages, most are fed low-nutrient diets, and it is a common practice to separate the ill from others. In essence, those who need psychiatric help and support the most are being left to suffer life in solitude.
Stunned by this reality yet inspired to raise awareness about this issue, American photographer Andrea Star Reese has been traveling to Indonesia the past few years to document the conditions the mentally ill live in. The photographs are difficult to stomach, but they relay the everyday horrors approximately 19 million mentally ill patients are forced to endure in Indonesia.
“There are still doctors that use only one prescription and one diagnosis – insane,” says Reese.
The activist hopes that by sharing these disturbing images, mental hospitals and the health practitioners employed by them are forced to adopt change.