A handsome man smiling out from his wedding pictures, it is easy to see how Komang was able to keep his history of mental health problems a secret from his new wife for so long.
But the shock of seeing the 34-year-old’s psychiatrist as a guest of honour at their marriage ceremony in picturesque north-east Bali must have paled into insignificance for his bride when paired with the revelation that her husband-to-be had been living locked in a cage with his brother for the past eight years.
The Indonesian farmer and his brother, Gedenut, 38, had been shackled 24 hours a day by their own family, trapped in a cage in the jungle a short distance from their remote home. The siblings’ father built the wooden bars for them himself after villagers complained they could not cope with the pair’s undiagnosed schizophrenia.
Unable to control the siblings from running riot when unwell, the community decided to keep them caged. Trapped in an enclosure so small they were barely able to turn around, visitors brought them food and water and washed them – but no-one could offer them treatment, much less a cure.
“The neighbours asked the family to look after them because they were making a disturbance,” explained Professor Luh Ketut Suryani, the Balinese psychiatrist whose team discovered and rescued the pair.
“These families are poor – they don’t have enough money to go to the doctor. So they got the idea to restrict the patients,” she said.
“If you have a mental health disorder in Bali don’t hope that someone will help you. “They will leave you the way you are and if you die it is even better for them than seeing you still alive. That is what’s happening to these people.”
Continue reading “Imprisoned in Paradise”
