Normally the window is covered by a piece of cloth. The door is locked and Ketut is left alone, all day, all night. His mother feeds him once a day. Any hope of achieving the national target of having the estimated 26,000 Pasung victims across the country released by 2014 seems daunting. © Ingetje Tadros / Diimex
Dr. Suryani, known as Bali's Good Samaritan, found Ketut in 2011 where he had been locked up and chained in a dark smelly room since 2006. She started treating him and the family was able to release him from the chain, but fear of what he may do leaves the family with no choice but to keep him locked in a room, minus the chains. © Ingetje Tadros / Diimex
Now Ketut has been released from the chain for three years, however he is still being kept in a dark and filthy room, unwashed and fed once a day. He has been in this room now for the past eight years. © Ingetje Tadros / Diimex
Ari is now capable of washing himself, albeit in dirty conditions. Ari's stepmother is his care-giver, as well as the care-giver of Ari's sister and mother, who are also mentally ill. © Ingetje Tadros / Diimex
Mila looked after her mentally ill mother and brother from a very young age and became mentally ill herself at the age of sixteen. Mila is now trapped by her own mental health, which leaves her laying in a small room, talking to herself. She is unfit to look after her family members who are also ill. Her mother is restrained in a small hut in a field behind the house. © Ingetje Tadros / Diimex
Kadek has been chained and locked up by his brother who is afraid to release Kadek: "He is too aggressive." Kadek was first restrained with a chain in 2004 but the log was added in 2013. © Ingetje Tadros / Diimex
Kadek now lays in bed twenty four hours a day, seven days a week and has been doing so for the past ten years. Kadek no longer has the ability to walk due to the restraining process which has permanently affected his body. © Ingetje Tadros / Diimex
Kadek's room has been her prison for the past twenty years. Her keeper is her father. He lets her out, sometimes, for brief periods in the afternoon. © Ingetje Tadros / Diimex
Kadek sits in her own bodily filth smeared across the floor. Her room has no windows and thus no ventilation. Her door is made of metal sheet iron, with a little window. Outside, it is secured with a large padlock. © Ingetje Tadros / Diimex
Kadek watches me while I sit with her in her own prison. The silence is deafening and yet her story is so loud. © Ingetje Tadros / Diimex
Gudeh has mood swings and often does not know what he is doing. Gudeh has been chained on one leg and is not able to walk around. The chain was shortened after he had previously jumped out the window. He has a thin dirty mat to lay on and the only thing he does is smoke cigarettes. © Ingetje Tadros / Diimex
"The chain has been made shorter," mentioned Gudeh's mother. "Previously, my son jumped through the window, climbed on to the verandah and took out some lightbulbs. He almost started a fire." © Ingetje Tadros / Diimex
Since 2003, Nyoman began to wander around and the family had no choice but to chain her behind the house, next to the pig stable. She was there for five years. After being released, they put her in a tiny bamboo hut. It contains a half-broken wooden plank—her bed. "Nyoman likes to scribble on paper. She can do this all day. Even when we open the door, she likes to stay in this room." © Ingetje Tadros / Diimex
Komang is not able to talk or walk. Sometimes her pathologic laughter can be heard from a great distance. It sounds hollow, emanating from her dark and empty chamber. © Ingetje Tadros / Diimex
Ni Wayan was left chained in a shed with chickens for many years. Then she was found by scouts of Dr. Suryani's team at the beginning of 2014. Now her mother is looking after her, while she is receiving medication. They both live in the kitchen. "Almost every case is treatable," states Dr. Suryani. © Ingetje Tadros / Diimex
Nengah is not in Pasung anymore. She tells me that after hearing voices and seeing a hallucination of a handsome man she murdered her stepmother. Her punishment was to be handed back to her family as the Court deemed her mentally unfit to stand trial. The family put her in the pig stable in the backyard in 2002. After being found by Dr. Suryani in 2012 she received treatment and was released from Pasung and is now free and receives no more medicines. © Ingetje Tadros / Diimex
Ketut, fifty eight years of age, is silently sitting and watching the day go by. He had been chained since 1974 and was released when Dr. Suryani found him in 2009. After five months of treatment, the family released him from his chains which had restrained him for thirty five years. His sister is caring for him. © Ingetje Tadros / Diimex
Wayan's room is two-by-three meters. There are no windows. Concrete floors and walls make up the room. She sleeps on the floor without a mattress. A chain still hangs in her room, even though she has been released after fourteen years of being in Pasung. Wayan is now on medication. The conditions under which all these people are kept would be considered inhumane, even for livestock in the West. © Ingetje Tadros / Diimex
Gede, now thirty five years of age and released from Pasung, is still weak and very skinny and unable to communicate. © Ingetje Tadros / Diimex
Dr. Suryani states that "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's what's happening to these people." © Ingetje Tadros / Diimex
When I walked into the room, I did not see a room. It was a cage and in that cage was a human being that had been stripped of her wings, her voice, her humanity. The first feelings that came to me as I entered this room, this cage, this holding pen, was that in the corner was another human—but one who was caged in many ways, mentally and physically.
