THESE days there are fewer mentally ill people wandering the streets of Montego Bay due to rehabilitation and a noticeable change in the community’s attitude towards them, according to the Committee for the Upliftment of the Mentally Ill (CUMI).

“The majority of them have left the street,” said CUMI’s nurse administrator Joy Crooks.

She told the Observer that the Montego Bay CUMI had managed to rehabilitate approximately 50 per cent of its clients, returning many of them to their families.

Crooks said the rehabilitated ranged from those suffering from schizo-affective disorders and multiple disorders to depression.

“We’ve had just over a thousand people coming through the centre, and at least five hundred of those are back in the community functioning quite adequately as stable individuals,” Crooks said.

At the same time, she noted that there were “still one or two who are rehabilitated” but who refuse to leave the streets.

Added Crooks: “But they are clean and fed and they are not eating out of the garbage or drinking sour water, and they are stable enough to know they can come here to get food, clothing and medication.”

The street population of mentally ill people, she claimed, had become literally invisible.

“Because they are clean and not behaving outrageously, you might not realise that it’s someone with a mental problem, you might think it’s someone just sitting in a corner begging.”

In addition, she noted that members of the public were becoming generally more aware and receptive to people with mental illnesses.

“We are really amazed and happy at the results that when our clients go into the community they are well accepted,” Crooks said, noting that this had been achieved through public education activities undertaken by CUMI with churches, schools and communities, as well as other civic groups.

“We have had some impact; through the intervention and linking with the community, and educating them and using our clients to do the demonstration in letting them see that they are normal persons, we have had tremendous success in that area,” Crooks remarked.

In the meantime, she said solid waste management group Western Parks and Markets had bought into the intervention programme by providing employment for CUMI clients.

Crooks said CUMI would also continue with its policy of public education on mental illness, and would also continue to provide its clients with a safety net.

“Our clients are evidence of what is possible with proper treatment and proper follow-up; they can properly recover and get ahead with normal life. That is why we are insisting that we need to have, in every single parish, a proper networking safety net system for our mentally ill persons so they don’t end up falling out of the safety net and ending up on the street,” she told the Observer.

At present, CUMI caters to approximately 1,300 individuals in the 18 to 72 age group, with a 12 to seven male female ratio.

Meanwhile, she also disclosed that the entity would be pushing to implement a drug rehabilitation programme for the second city.

“Right now we have cleared the street of most of the mentally ill persons. But we don’t have a solution for those who are drug addicts on our streets and we couldn’t really accommodate them under a mentally ill rehabilitation programme because, by right, drug addicts are not really mentally ill unless they have a psychotic disorder,” Crooks pointed out.

She noted that, to date, the Cornwall Regional hospital had liaised with Patricia House a facility for drug addicts in Kingston, but said Patricia House, has been having a problem identifying a location in Montego Bay.

The group has been soliciting help from individuals and groups that can aid in identifying a suitable location in Montego Bay.

“Patricia House is willing to come and set up a rehab down here, but the St James community has got to help because our organisation and their organisation are NGOs and so we have got to get help from the government and from the general community”, the nurse administrator said.

She noted that while some responses had come in, “nothing tangible” had been received as yet.

She was, however, optimistic that a facility would be put in place as soon as the lobbying efforts evoked a response.