Nazish has been stuck inside the same four walls in #Karachi, Pakistan for 12 years. She's in Asia's largest #asylum, a place not just for mentally ill women, but a dumping ground for Karachi's unwanted, inconvenient women. And their numbers are growing: originally housing just 400 patients, 1700 women are now crammed inside.
It is a huge, massive concrete rectangle planted in the heart of the northern districts of Karachi. 250 metres long, 120 metres wide, that’s the scale of the world for the patients who live within these four walls. Bilquis Edhi House is the largest #psychiatric hospital for women in all of #Asia ...
Yet not all of the women who are cared for here are mentally ill. Far from it. Rather, they are victims of the violence of society, victims of the #violence of men. Beaten and then repudiated by their husbands, mistreated by their in-laws, stigmatized by their own families who make them bear the brunt of the failure of their marriage and reject them, they find themselves alone and without a future. A condemnation without return. Weakened, humiliated, they then slowly fall into madness. The only place they find refuge is the Bilquis Edhi center.
In #Pakistan, the NGO Edhi replaced an absent state in many areas. From the management of orphanages to maternity hospitals, including ambulance services and the emergency reception center for women, Bilquis Edhi, the only free psychiatric hospital in the country is the ultimate refuge for all those who no longer know where to go...
