With Doctors and Money In Short Supply, Mentally Disabled Suffer In Rural Nepal

• Photographer
  Shilu Manandhar
• Agency / Studio
  Global Press

Families in rural Nepal, often isolated and impoverished, struggle to care for children with special needs. Healthcare is scarce in mountain villages and mental healthcare is even harder to find, leaving mentally disabled people without basic treatment or even diagnoses. When an earthquake killed nearly 9,000 people and caused destruction across huge swaths of Nepal in 2015, it highlighted the need for more mental health services. Doctors then told Global Press Journal that the country of 29 million people had just 110 psychiatrists and about 400 general counselors.

After serving as a foreign correspondent in Nepal, Cristi Hegranes founded Global Press in 2006. She has a Master’s degree in Journalism from New York University and a Bachelor’s degree from Loyola Marymount University. Cristi served as a fellow-in-residence at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg and taught courses in entrepreneurship and journalism at San Francisco State University, California State University, East Bay and Stanford University. She is a 2013 Ashoka Fellow and the recipient of the Grinnell College Young Innovator for Social Justice Prize.