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People with mental illnesses struggle to fight stigma
âI feel that Iâm useless
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'I feel that I'm useless. Sometimes I don't want to live but I don't want to die either,' Bambang Rudjito, 43, who suffers from schizoaffective disorder, said in Memory of My Face, an ethnographic film on severe mental illness in Indonesia.
The film, directed by ethnographic filmmaker and University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) anthropologist Robert Lemelson, portrays Bambang's struggle to recover from his mental illness and to live as a normal person despite his emotional turmoil.
The film was screened at Taman Ismail Marzuki (TIM) cultural center on Tuesday. The event was sponsored by the Community of Indonesian Care for Schizophrenia (KSPI), the Jakarta Arts Council and Elemental Productions, to raise awareness of the importance of family support for people with mental illness.
Bambang, who works as an English teacher, said that negative feelings such as anxiety and depression were heightened when he reflected on his role within his family.
'When my husband started to get sick, he didn't remember anyone, including me. Almost anything would upset him. He would also run away from home,' Bambang's wife, Yatni, said after the film screening.
Another film, Split Mind, introduced the audience to the internal suffering of a schizophrenic, Lilik Suwardi, who was abandoned and mocked by his family and neighbors.
Split Mind producer Nia Sari said she was inspired by her brother. 'My brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was still at senior high school. It was hard for our family to believe that he really suffered from a mental illness since he was such an obedient, helpful and nice person,' she said.
Nia said that at the very beginning her father thought her brother was under a spell.
'My father took him to an Islamic boarding school for religious treatment,' Nia said. 'I want to show my parents that his state of mind was not supernatural: There was something medically wrong.'
Nia interviewed Lilik, who authored a book about his disease.
'He is truly inspiration and illustrates how a person with schizophrenia can be useful in the community,' she said.
KSPI head Bagus Utomo said during the event that the community wanted the society's perception of mental illness to change. 'People with mental illnesses suffer their
entire lives. They want to recover but they feel powerless. I wish our society had more empathy,' he said.
Nia added that she expected her film to change the belief that people with mental illness were possessed by demonic spirits.
'Many parents still believe that their children are possessed if they say they hear loud voices inside their head or see shadows,' she said explaining that these hallucinations appeared because of an imbalance of biological neurons. (tam).
