…caregivers face violence, lack of medical, psychosocial support
Rutendo Chirume
United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) stipulates that each government should ensure that persons with disabilities get access to free services at a mental institution which include sexual and reproductive health rights, medication and even care from skilled personnel but Zimbabwe still lags behind and is not walking the talk with many women and mothers left vulnerable and exposed to attack from their children or relatives having mental challenges.
Life has been a somewhat horror experience for women who take care of their relatives with mental illnesses where they are expected to be primary care givers by virtue of societal gender roles and therefore bear the brunt of all that comes with it.
Such an example is that of an elderly woman named Shylet Mutekede from Masvingo South Ward 14 who has been taking care of her three daughters who were born with mental challenges and are not able to do anything for themselves, therefore in need of intensive care 24\7.
Narrating how they have been living, Shylet said she has been striving to take care of her daughters and access to medication and sexual reproductive health services is something she can only dream of for her daughters.
“It has been a very tough experience for me taking care of my children. The clinic is a long distance away almost 10kms and sometimes when their situation gets worse, we will have to use an ox-drawn cart to the clinic. When having their monthly cycles, sometimes I just make them use black t-shirts then go to the fields the whole day and no one can change them so they will just have to wait till I come back,” narrated Shylet.
Whilst women like Shylet are expected to take care of their children since no one will be there, mentally challenged persons can also turn violent and their care givers are often exposed to physical assaults, rape and even sometimes mental breakdown since there is no one who would be helping them.
The 2022 International Women’s Day celebrations were marked under the theme ‘gender equality today for sustainable tomorrow’ which seeks to break gender bias and promote fairness in terms of gender in society where due to patriarchy women are often burdened through taking care of their mentally ill children alone.
Whether deliberate or unconscious, gender bias makes it difficult for women to move ahead since society attribute them to certain specific gender roles and action is needed to level the field.
In an interview with TellZim, president of Women Action Group (WAG) Medina Musiiwa said more efforts should be put on sexual and reproductive health services, especially to the mentally disabled to ease the lives of caregivers.
“We expect that focus should be put on sexual and reproductive health issues considering that women are the ones expected to give primary care unto their children. We need an improvement of the health delivery system. We cannot have a sustainable tomorrow if our people are not having these services,” said Musiiwa.
Besides being expected to be natural care givers, women who take care of mentally challenged people need to be at least trained since people like that require special care.
Musasa project director Rotina Musara said it is high time society recognize the burden of unpaid care work especially when that goes in where someone has to nurse mentally challenged patients and would require skill or training on how to take care of them.
“Unpaid care work is critical in development and it is unfortunate that sometimes as society, we fail to cost the burden of unpaid work. We expect that it should be like that yet we tend to be ignorant of the caregiver’s work and portray it as gender roles. This women’s month, we are saying let us recognize the value of women and mothers who do unpaid work especially those who nurse mentally challenged persons who have various needs that require more attention that is administering medications, how to relate and talk to them.
“This is an area where training is not offered but we assume that a woman should have the expertise to handle a mentally challenged individual. Therefore as a society and even government, we need to recognize unpaid care work that mothers do and invest emotions into that work. Women double with nursing and we should look out for challenges that they might face in terms of abuse or being assaulted,” said Musara.
Masvingo provincial police spokesperson Inspector Kudakwashe Dhewa raised his concerns over the rise in cases where mentally challenged people are involved in murder and assault and advised that caregivers should be mindful of medical prescriptions and where women are involved, their safety should be guaranteed since these patients can sometimes turn violent.
“Sometimes mental challenges can be managed as long as the caregivers are taking caution on how to administer medication as prescribed by the doctors. If they are not at a mental institution, mentally challenged people should report to clinics or hospitals for their medication. Also in case where caregivers are women, their safety should be guaranteed as these patients sometimes tend to be violent,” said Dhewa.
