PETALING JAYA, Malaysia: Chaining mental patients to their beds and leaving them to run in the nude is sheer abuse and inhumane, says Asean Federation for Psychiatry and Mental Health president Prof Dr Mohamad Hussain Habil.

He said caregivers who carried out such malpractice could be charged in court because they were not equipped with the knowledge to take care of the patients.

"There is also no excuse for welfare officers to be ignorant about the proper care for patients because there are training workshops available at the University of Malaya," said Dr Mohamad Hussain who is also the university's psychological medicine department head.

He said restricting patients' movements by chaining them was not the way to prevent them from inflicting harm on themselves.

"The right way is to treat them with the necessary medication and not with physical restraint. The medicine would be able to help them minimise such self destructive behaviour and help their condition," he said, adding that such actions stem from lack of awareness and knowledge.

Dr Mohamad Hussain was appalled to hear "horror" stories of patients being left in the nude because the caregivers were fearful that they may turn violent and use their clothes to hurt others.

He said caregivers must be aware of the latest medication to be given to the patients and that early treatment would help stop the disorders from deteriorating.

"Sometimes, the family of the patient is not aware that the condition is an illness that can be treated. They mistake it for something that will pass like mood swings," he said.

"That is why it is important to bring the patient to a doctor to identify the true condition and how it should be dealt with," Dr Mohamad Hussain added.

He said most chronic mental disorder patients who continuously took medicine were able to recover and function normally in life with the right type of care.

Dr Fadzil Man, a private psychiatrist also agreed that mental patients should be given medicine along with proper care such as counselling and other therapies.

Asked to comment on the standard of care mental patients in Malaysia receive, Dr Fadzil said there was still room for improvement.

On how mental patients were normally treated in wards, he revealed that the most common way was to sedate those who were hyper and caused harm to themselves or others.

"Of course, it's been known that some private-run shelters and homes who take in mental patients do not provide the necessary and proper care for them.

"They (the mental patients) are treated in such horrible ways, sometimes worse than animals just because they aren't able to verbalise their feelings and thoughts," he said.

He told The Star that cases of patients being chained, undressed and caged up were not unheard of.

"Normally these patients are what we call the "critical" ones and family members who can't cope with them just leave them at shelters or sometimes completely abandon them." -The Star/ANN