Venezuela's spiralling mental healthcare crisis

Luis Alberto Machado can barely sustain a conversation, let alone remember the day he attacked his mother by hitting her over the head with a rock. The 34-year-old was diagnosed with schizophrenia in his mid-teens. Back then he was still a boy but today his gangly frame towers over his petite 60-year-old mother, Maria Machado, making her an easy target for his violent psychosis. "We've had to lose the fear and learn to hold him down," explained Luis's 28-year-old sister Maria Ruli. "[He's broken] the fridge, the blender. My mother has no life because of him.". More…