nearly 30 day boarders at the psychiatric rehabilitation services department of psychiatry at nimhans have been busy painting diyas for deepavali in a first of its kind initiative nimhans psychiatric rehabilitation services decided to engage day boarders in making deepavali kits that include two handpainted diyas four ecofriendly rangoli colours and two stencils all in a reusable cardboard box close to 500 kits have already been made of which 60 have found buyersa threeyearlong journey thats growing strongthis initiative has come after three years of training the patients to make ecofriendly colours which involved recycling discarded flowers from temples and wedding halls and then sorting and cutting the petals it took some time to train them but we have come a long way and most of them do excellent work with minimum handholding last year some 100 kilograms of colours were made by the patients with the help of doctors and instructors says dr t sivakumar associate professor psychiatric rehabilitation services department of psychiatry nimhans the best thing about such an activity is that it is not boring or monotonous and makes the entire process enjoyable he says dr sivakumar t and dr deepak jayarajan at the psychiatric rehabilitation services at nimhans along with a local ngo started the initiative three years ago good way to bust myths about mental illnessspeaking about the initiative dr pratima murthy head department of psychiatry at nimhans says many of these patients are creative but this kind of a focused creative involvement also makes them productive besides making them economically sound vocational rehabilitation is an important aspect of recovery in psychiatric illness it helps people develop selfconfidence improves their motivation level provides them with an avenue for socialising enables better integration and improves their productivity experts also opine that such initiatives lower the stigma and preconceived notions around persons with mental health problems and their capabilities the challenge is that there is a common belief that people with psychiatric disabilities cannot do productive work but the truth is that when given an opportunity like this along with training they can go a long way we wanted to prove that patients with psychiatric disabilities can be productive members of society added dr t sivakumar associate professor psychiatric rehabilitation services department of psychiatry the money from sales is distributed among the patientsdr sivakumar adds that the proceeds made as part of the programme were distributed among the patients many patients wanted cycles or cricket bats so we took them to a sports store and bought it for them since the proceeds are distributed among the patients the economic incentive gives them a sense of purpose and motivation he says urging people to celebrate the festival with a purpose