I have never met Rina, but an account of her struggle (pdf) to come to terms with her mental illness is moving.
“My name is Rina … I have been to hell and back, and I am proud to be able to stand here tall and say that I survived and I am continuing to survive my illness and society’s stereotypes of me. I am also a woman, mother, wife and an individual with schizophrenia.”
Rina has the right combination of medication and a support structure to address her illness. But there are thousands of women in India who are not as fortunate, as a recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, Treated worse than animals, revealed.