Re-designing the substance de-addiction centre in government mental healthcare hospital, Erragadda, Hyderabad

Abstract

Sunita, our previous house help of two years, would often come over to have a casual conversation after work and we’d chat away for hours regarding mundane whatnots. After a year and more of not being in touch due to the pandemic and the lockdown, we’d finally met again but things were not the same. She had the same energy while she talked, however there was a tone of soberness masking her voice. And after talking about more mundane whatnots, we finally asked how life is going, how she was managing stuff in the post covid situation, how the kids and husband were. It was all okay until the question raised about her family crisis, is when she almost broke down into tears. The once happy, loving husband and father was no more, what laid instead was a shell of a man, vile with resentment and anger towards the lockdown, towards the wife, the kids and the job, one who had resorted to alcohol to bury the anger andinstead succumbed to seduction of the addiction. Not once did Sunita cry, about the physical abuse she and her children endured, about the ripped skin on their backs or the time her young daughter and even younger son were kicked out in her absence by their father, kicked out to a much more sinister basti of Sanath nagar. Two years’ worth of trauma had evidently normalised the ordeal for her, two years’ worth of what was happening in her house, and what was happening around her in those narrow shoddy shacks, too frail to contain the sounds of bottles crashing. Countless urging from our side to seek help hadn’t managed to convince her, it was either pride or security and alas pride always wins in Indian societies. Pride for the society makes you swallow your own. At this point I realised my privilege, alcohol abuse was nothing new in my household, but the ability and privilege to approach the right system, and seek the required care was something I realised.