Women with psychosocial or intellectual disabilities are vulnerable to abuse and they have little say in what happens to them in institutions in India. To add to that, state institutions are often overcrowded, the sanitation and hygiene dismal, access to treatment and counselling poor, and rehabilitation efforts non-existent.For more than 70 million people with psychosocial disabilities — mental health conditions such as schizophrenia or depression — who live in India, access to mental health services is poor, with only 43 state-run mental hospitals across the country, three psychiatrists and 0.47 psychologists per million people. The few voluntary community-based services that do exist are short-staffed and lack resources.

In India, many women and girls with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities are locked up in institutions against their will. Some of the institutions for those women, who have disabilities ranging from Down Syndrome and cerebral palsy to schizophrenia and depression, are filthy and overcrowded. Human Rights Watch’s Kriti Sharma spoke with Amy Braunschweiger about the 24 institutions she and other researchers visited across four Indian states – including government mental hospitals and government and private residential care facilities – for the new report, “’Treated Worse than Animals.’“ This is what they found.

We drove up a narrow, winding road, with trees on both sides for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, at the top of the hill, there it was: a three-building complex with a sign on the gate that read “Psihijatrijska bolnica Lopača” (Psychiatric Hospital “Lopača”).