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Created in 1994, The Yayasan Galuh rehabilitation center is a foundation that cares for mentally-ill individuals who have been expelled from the Indonesian society and who have no access to medical care due to their limited financial resources.
What makes this center unique is the fact that treatments do not involve drugs or modern medicine.
Patients are solely treated using alternative medicine and natural treatments (plants, massage,
prayers).

At first sight, this center may appear to be a boon for those mentally ill-individuals but this becomes
questionable after you start looking into it.

We shared the life of the 250 patients for several days and the first thing that struck us was the living condition of the residents. Deprived of privacy, most patients are chained to posts nights and days, forced to sleep on the floor of an overheated hall.

Approximately 30 women are locked in a room with fenced wires. They are fed and cleaned through
the wire netting. Needless to say the sanitary conditions are alarming and the fetid smell unbearable.

The representatives of the center claim that mentally-ill individuals are treated successfully thanks to
those 'unique' treatments and that most of the patients ultimately manage to reintegrate the Indonesia
society. This statement is difficult to believe from our “Westerner” point of view.

In a nutshell, our story illustrates the life of these men and women who suffer from heavy mental
disorders and whose only option is to join the rehabilitation center often causing them to lose their
dignity.

Pierre-Emmanuel Boiton / Arnaud Guiguitant