Simba, the resident black-and-white cat, unspools out of her little corner, stretches languidly and jumps on to Meena Mutha's lap. Abandoned and starving to death a while ago, she was adopted by Mutha and now she not only has a home in a corner of the Manav Foundation's office at Masina Hospital in Byculla, central Mumbai, but is also used for animal therapy sessions conducted for people with schizophrenia and crippling mental illnesses.

"Mentally disturbed individuals respond beautifully to animals. They often feel rejected by a society that tends to judge their trauma," says Mutha, as she ushers Simba out of the room and settles down to have a cup of tea. "Animals, on the other hand, do not judge."
Mutha heads Manav Foundation, which works with mentally ill or disturbed people and those suffering from depression or schizophrenia. They have a rehabilitation centre or a day care therapy centre, where the victims of mental illnesses are treated, not so much through medicine but through a variety of counselling sessions and workshops like theatre, music and craft.
It was a personal tragedy that led 51-year-old Mutha to set up Manav Foundation. She was born in Jabalpur and was inspired by her doctor father and social worker mother; the seeds of activism were sowed early in young Meena. The family shifted to Mumbai and Mutha studied at Jai Hind College before getting married. In 1982, she co-founded Aastha, a group working with 'borderline children', kids with below normal intelligence level who did not fit in society.

The catalyst for setting up Aastha was her own daughter (name withheld to protect her identity), a child with severe learning disability and one who was also given to bouts of severe depression. The little girl was born premature and early on, Mutha realised that her daughter was not 'normal'. "I have twins and while one grew well and fast, the other was slow. She took her own time to start walking." Though the child showed signs of a learning disability, Mutha sent her to a normal school. Her daughter faced adjustment problems, but the mother was reluctant to send her to a special institute for spastic children. "Those were tough times; I was running from pillar to post to find special schools for kids with learning disabilities. At that time there were none in Mumbai, only two in Hyderabad, one in Bangalore and one in Chennai."

That's when she met Zaira Rangwala, who was then heading the Children Orthopaedic Hospital, where Mutha took her daughter for treatment. "She strongly felt that I should set up a special school for kids with learning disabilities. I didn't but seven years later when I met Rangwala again, she had set up the School for Remedial Education." Mutha sent her daughter to the school, got together with parents of other such kids and formed Child Reach, a counselling-cum-outreach programme.
Her daughter's school years were relatively smooth after that, until she hit the troublesome teens. "Being vulnerable and emotionally weak, she was prone to severe depression," says the mother who took her child to several medical practitioners but with very little result. It reached such a critical stage that Mutha had to get her admitted to Masina Hospital.
Her personal circumstances gave her the impetus to start her second outreach programme under the aegis of Manav Foundation. "I felt actual treatment wasn't enough so I looked around for a rehabilitation centre. I again drew a blank." She did what she knew best: she seized the opportunity and took that crucial first step. She approached the administrators of Masina Hospital with a proposal to start a day rehabilitation centre and they gave her the go ahead. Today, a corner of the hospital forms the base for Mutha and her team of therapists and volunteers.

The centre opened its doors on February 7, 2005 with just one patient, Mutha and her trusted partner, Binaifer Jesia, who responded to an ad placed by her and joined the organisation. “We had a paper, pen and chatais for workstations,” she says. “Today, we counsel 40 patients for mental and emotional problems, depression and schizophrenia. We have trained psychologists working with us.”
Mutha’s daughter is a regular at the centre. She herself underwent practical training and counselling at the Heart to Heart Counselling Centre in Mumbai, in a bid to learn more about the diseases they were dealing with. “The biggest problem people with mental illnesses or depression face is lack of acceptance,” she feels. “When you are alone, lost or lonely, you need that little support to get back on your feet.”
The centre uses different kinds of therapies – music and art, drama and animal therapy – to treat those suffering from mental disturbances. It conducts one-to-one and group counselling sessions, teaches basic kitchen skills and self-defence techniques. “The mentally afflicted are constantly fighting with their inner enemy, the demons inside, because of which they are vulnerable. They need to be physically trained to take care of themselves on a day-to-day basis.”
The therapy progammes, many of them designed and also conducted by Jesia, are arranged in a way that the patients never get bored of what they are doing. If art lessons are held on Mondays, then it is time for craft sessions on Tuesdays. On Wednesdays they hit the dance floor while Thursdays are reserved for theatre. On Fridays they do some kitchen work. Afternoons are reserved for individual counselling sessions, where a structured programme, tailored for every individual, is implemented.

“Our drama therapy sessions talk about anger and forgiveness,” says Jesia, who has been with the centre since it began and is Mutha’s ‘big support’. They have just begun their animal therapy sessions and Simba was trained for those by Animal Angels, which uses trained dogs for the same. “We found Simba adapting really well to the programme,” she adds. “When she is with a patient, she is a completely different personality. She is calm and allows them to get accustomed to her. She responds with a lot of love when they pick her up or touch her.” But at other times, with the volunteers and employees of the foundation or regular visitors, Simba behaves like any normal cat, looking at you disdainfully as you try to pat her and curling up on a cushy chair to doze off.
The foundation has six therapists working with it, some trained, some under training, a few psychologists and some social workers. Mutha’s dream is to set up a live-in centre, where patients can be admitted. “What they need is an environment where they will be comfortable and accepted.”
Over the years, Mutha and Jesia have seen severely depressed people, or those with schizophrenia, respond to the therapies and the counselling. Most are desperate for just that one breakthrough, that one gesture of sympathy which eludes people with mental illnesses. “Judgements come easy to us,” muses Mutha. “We tend to label those with schizophrenia or depressed people, as ‘mental’. In circumstances like these, it’s difficult to get them out of their shells or to get them to trust us.” There have been several challenges, like the ethical questions that crop up when you are dealing with people with mental disturbances and the lack of funds, for instance. But there have been several breakthroughs too, patients who have made amazing recovery to lead near normal lives. Of course, the fear of relapse remains, but at least there is a space and a group of people they can turn to.
Unlike what you would expect given the diseases they are dealing with, the Manav Foundation office and the centre isn’t a cheerless places. There is an air of normality around, a buzz as food is cooked in the kitchen, as the volunteers gather around the large, long wooden table where they eat lunch and as they go about their work. This is the kind of normal life mentally disturbed people crave for.

When you are lost and lonely as I was, there are two outcomes: you further sink into that feeling of helplessness or you rise above it. Manav Foundation is the positive outcome of the feeling of helplessness I felt when I did not find what I was looking for,” believes Mutha. Besides a temporary shelter, the centre also offers patients a sympathetic, yet firm support. “Often parents, because they are emotionally involved, forget that firmness is a big requirement because the people you are dealing with are moody,” she says.
Mutha finds that she has developed immense patience and some firmness through the years at the centre. “I used to deal with my daughter as any parent would, with a lot of emotional distress. Now, I have learnt how to be firm. Saying no sometimes works in their interest than giving in.”