Source: www.denhaag.nl
It is already 2015 and yet many still are clueless regarding mental health issues. The World Mental Health Day is celebrated on October the 10th each year. This celebration was first initiated in 1992 as an initiative of the World Federation for Mental Health. During this day, each year a campaign would be run by various organisations to help increase awareness about mental health, educate the public about mental health and promote advocacy. For 2014 the theme was “Living with Schizophrenia” and each year a different a theme is chosen. That particular aspect of mental health will then be promoted to the public and celebrated.
Have you wondered where to go when a loved one is afflicted with a mental health issue? Perhaps the following scenarios will resonate with some of you.
“My brother has been behaving aggressively over the past 1 week. He has been shouting at us, threatening us and destroying things at home. I noticed he has not slept well over the past week and keeps to himself. He has been more irritable of late and I have seen him talking to himself. He said that, “‘they’ were coming for him”, and that, “we were not his real family”. He truly believed that ‘we’ are working with ‘them’ and want to hurt him. He doesn’t take care of himself anymore and has stopped going for his college classes. We are at our wits end and afraid that he would harm us. “
This scenario is suggestive of Schizophrenia, the mental illness highlighted in the 2014 theme for the World Mental Health day. In any population, 1% of the general population is at risk of having this illness. It can afflict anyone regardless of ethnicity, education level, financial status or status in society.
“When I am high I couldn’t worry about money if I tried. So I don’t. The money will come from somewhere; I am entitled; God will provide. Credit cards are disastrous, personal checks worse. Unfortunately, for manics anyway, mania is a natural extension of the economy. What with credit cards and bank accounts there is little beyond reach. So I bought twelve snakebite kits, with a sense of urgency and importance. I bought precious stones, elegant and unnecessary furniture, three watches within an hour of one another (in the Rolex rather than Timex class: champagne tastes bubble to the surface, are the surface, in mania), and totally inappropriate siren like clothes. During one spree in London I spent several hundred pounds on books having titles or covers that somehow caught my fancy: books on the natural history of the mole, twenty sundry Penguin books because I thought it could be nice if the penguins could form a colony. Once I think I shoplifted a blouse because I could not wait a minute longer for the woman-with-molasses feet in front of me in line. Or maybe I just thought about shoplifting, I don’t remember, I was totally confused. I imagine I must have spent far more than thirty thousand dollars during my two major manic episodes, and God only knows how much more during my frequent milder manias.
But then back on lithium and rotating on the planet at the same pace as everyone else, you find your credit is decimated, your mortification complete: mania is not a luxury one can easily afford. It is devastating to have the illness and aggravating to have to pay for medications, blood tests, and psychotherapy. They, at least, are partially deductible. But money spent while manic doesn’t fit into the Internal Revenue Service concept of medical expense or business loss. So after mania, when most depressed, you’re given excellent reason to be even more so.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
The above quote is an excerpt from Kay Redfield Jamison , a renowned American clinical psychologist and writer. She talks about her battle with Bipolar Disorder in her memoir and currently is Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. It took her a lot of courage to share her experiences about her journey with the illness. It shows that even though you have a mental illness it is no excuse for you not to succeed.
“I feel very unhappy with myself these past few weeks and I don’t feel I am performing as well as I used at work, I find that I am easily tired and can’t focus on my work. As a doctor, I tend to make mistakes that a house officer would. I find that I am easily irritated and have constant headache. I find that I am sleeping poorly and have no mood to eat like before. I am increasingly dissatisfied with my life; I feel so hopeless and wished that I would die. I feel frustrated with myself as I every reason to be happy, yet can’t seem to shake the sense of doom and gloom that has been clouding each day. It has affected my relationship with my fiancée, family and colleagues.“
This scenario is highly suggestive of Major depressive Disorder, we tend to think of people with such complaints as the ‘Gloomy Gus’. This illness is real and The Global Burden of Disease predicts that depression will be the second leading cause of disease burden for total disease burden in the year 2020. In that same report, psychiatric and neurological conditions is predicted to increase their share of total burden from 10.5 percent to 15 percent.
When encountered with such situations, the British war quote comes to mind, ‘Stay Calm, HELP is Available’. According to the National Psychiatric and Mental Health Services Operational Policy (2011), in Malaysia to date there are 680 health centers providing early detection, treatment and follow up with 27 health centers with psychosocial rehabilitation programmes. There are psychiatry departments in most if not all major hospitals in the capital cities and in some district hospitals. Therefore, accessibility to psychiatry care is more feasible and readily available to the Malaysian public. The following are useful links that may help you out:
- http://www.psychiatry-malaysia.org/
- http://www.myhealth.gov.my/
- http://mmha.org.my/
- http://www.befrienders.org.my/
‘We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone.’
Dr. Nazariah Aiza Harun is a Psychiatrist and currently a Trainee in Child & Adolescent Psychiatry based in a government hospital. She is also Vice President of The Early Career Psychiatrists Chapter of the Malaysia Psychiatric Association (ECP).
[This article belongs to The Malaysian Medical Gazette. Any republication (online or offline) without written permission from The Malaysian Medical Gazette is prohibited.]