mental health treatment (lack thereof) in Asia

http://www.time.com/time/asia/photoessays/mental_illness/23.html

Photo by John Stanmeyer for TimeAsia. See the link just above, for the photo essay and article.

There is a horrific article and photo essay just out, about mental health "treatment" in Asia. The photo just above is one of several of those taken in Indonesia, which appears to have the most heart-wrenching problems. Persons with mental illness and/or drug problems are, apparently, treated as the "dirt" of society. There is nothing new about this in human history, of course; most cultures, in most times, have carefully and often cruelly excluded those who are different, those who are imperfect/flawed... and we share this trait with other species...

And, lest we feel smug, as members of a Western culture, with nice clean psychiatric hospitals: We must not forget that this impulse in favor of exclusion is actively played out in our own culture today, every day, by our own stigmatization of mental illness, drug abuse, illness of all kinds, handicaps of all kinds, gender-related and sexual orientation-related differences from the "norm," non-"traditional" families, racial differences...