Maryknoll Nepal, established in 1991, is a non-profit, non-governmental voluntary social organization, duly registered with His Majesty’s Government and Social Welfare Council of Nepal. It was established with the main aim of releasing all the chronically mentally ill patients locked in different jails like Central Jail in Kathmandu and Dhulikhel jail in Kavre. Those patients were imprisoned for many years, solely for being mentally ill. There were no hospital facilities to accommodate them and the families did not want them back due to the chronic and relapsing nature of their illness. Psychiatric treatment within the jail does not exist. The other two aims are to provide treatment and then, to rehabilitate the mentally ill within their own families and communities.






Environment of Central Jail, where mental patients were kept and treated inhumanely (During 1993).

HISTORY:

Maryknoll Nepal in cooperation with the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth (SCN) launched a program to free all the women with mental illness from the prison.  The program commenced on May 16, 1993, when families of imprisoned female mental patients were contacted and rehabilitation process began.  Initially six female patients were brought to the Sisters' residence, Navjyoti, from the prison.  At that time there were forty-six mentally ill women in prison.   The freed patients were kept in Navjyoti Center for a year. Then after they were shifted in a treatment and rehabilitation home named as Aasha Deep ( Light of Hope) which was designed as a Therapeutic Community under the management of Maryknoll Nepal.  Following on from its beginning in rehabilitating women with mental illness, Aasha Deep also began to accommodate men in October 1995.