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5 years ago

The blight of mental illness: Need for counseling

UK appointed a minister for loneliness in January last
UK appointed a minister for loneliness in January last

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Around 4,500 people commit suicide every year in Britain, says a recent report. The country's authorities dealing with mental health has lately detected a drop in the number of people taking their lives. This decline doesn't apparently bring much relief to them. That Prime Minister Theresa May gave an added responsibility to her health minister to deal with suicides, demonstrates the UK's unease with the scourge. From now on, Health Minister Jackie Doyle-Price will be seen leading government efforts to reduce the number suicides. She has also been tasked with helping government erase stigmas that prevent people with mental health complications from seeking counselling.

That the UK is very much eager to see its citizens enjoy a life free of psychological traumas was found in another government step not long ago. It involved picking a minister with the task of dealing with loneliness. The knowledge that loneliness and suicidal drives are interlinked is no longer confined to psychiatrists. Even moderately educated people are aware of the fact: loneliness, depression and suicide belong to a broader genre of psychological disorders. The tendency to remain aloof from people and everyday activities accompanies a series of mental aberrations. Beginning on a moderate level, the condition ends up, in extreme cases, in the suicide of a person.

The mental disorder issue, including suicide, came to the fore during the observance of World Mental Health Day on October 10. The day's theme this year was "Young People and Mental Health in a Changing World." In a world dominated by youths engaged in scores of stressful and hazardous activities, or caught up in a void, few themes could have been more appropriate. What's worrying today is a section of younger generations' lunge towards suicide. It is violence directed towards oneself. In Bangladesh, urban youths in particular are becoming increasingly vulnerable to mental illness. This ailment, like in the highly developed countries as well, visibly has its roots in the alienation created by insular lifestyles. Vacuum creates spaces for wild and morbid thoughts to take over people, the young in particular. Rural youths in general can remain free of this luxury of being drawn to the domain of negative thoughts. Struggles for arranging two square meals a day leave little scope for them to wallow in the perverse pleasure of loneliness, or for that matter, the thoughts of suicide. This violent act, however, has lately been on the rise among rural young women and adolescent girls. Apart from a few, the cause of their committing suicide doesn't remain a riddle. The reasons are mostly related to socio-familial adversities.      

Despite differences in socio-economic realities between the advanced nations and Bangladesh, they have things in common in many areas. One of them is the bent of mind. It's chiefly the fear of being tainted by stigma that prevents many in Bangladesh from visiting psychiatrists or clinics. This trend was once said to be prevalent in the less advanced countries. From the British government's emphasis on taking steps to help people overcome the inhibition of being stigmatised, one thing becomes clear. In the 21st century world, even the highly developed countries are not free of this prejudice.

A widely cited reason nowadays points out a new reality. It can be explained in this way: too much automation and the ubiquitous presence of digital wizardry continue to prompt the machine-weary man to hark back to his simple and uncomplicated past. Compared to the simple and innocent nature of man decades back, he is found caught in myriad complications, an abysmal darkness engulfing him. This condition is created not as much by inner factors as by the external ones. Thanks to the fast increase in the city-based hectic life and the negative urban impact on the youths, Bangladesh is inexorably being pushed into this path.

The country presents a long-familiar scenario when it comes to the picture of its public mental healthcare. Non-availability of reliable information about people suffering from mental disorders plagues this area in the country. The general tendency to hide the cases of psychological ailment serves as a great hindrance to the portrayal of a true picture of the disease's prevalence. Ironically, this trend is entrenched in both individuals and families. Even persons who got cured after treatment in most cases try to conceal their phases of ailment. In short, discussing the fits of mental disorders is a taboo subject in South Asian countries. As has been gleaned from the initiatives to create a 'suicide prevention' segment in the British health ministry set-up, patients' dread for stigma also prevails there. However due to the Western societies being mostly inhibition-free ones, discussion on psychological problems continues to be part of life. In Bangladesh, utmost efforts are taken so that not a faint piece of information about a mental patient in the family gets leaked out. The rudimentary state of medical infrastructure engaged in treating mental diseases aggravates the situation.

A tiny 4.0 per cent of medical doctors in the country are imparted training to cover the mental patients. Surveys conducted on the sector are appallingly inadequate. According to a survey carried out in 2006, the number of professionals who graduated in that year in psychiatry out of all successful students was incredibly negligible. Experts have not failed to detect that the medical profession in the country is alarmingly disconnected from mental healthcare. In accordance with this reality, coupled with the adverse social condition, detailed information about mental patients and suicide cases continue to be elusive. Earlier, in 2003-2005, a national survey showed 16.05 per cent of the adult population in the country were suffering from mental illness. According to a WHO report, less than 0.5 per cent of the total national health expenditure in 2005 went to the mental health sector. In this context, the role of policymakers in properly addressing the mental health problem warrants focus. In the process of their routine style of policy framing, they tend to remain oblivious to a vital fact; keeping the mentally ill people untreated impairs their productivity.

In backward societies, mental patients are subject to ridicule and social marginalisation. Advanced countries are free of it. In developing countries like Bangladesh, urban people are prompted as much by subjective, or reflective, reasons to commit suicides as by sudden mental shocks. In the distant past in Bangladesh, ending one's life due to acute poverty was a common occurrence. Failure in debt repayments had been a prime factor behind suicides in villages for over a century. With material wellbeing and affluence making way for new interpretations of life, suicides took a backseat in the rural layman's thoughts; but life could not be prevented from becoming complicated in the cities. The fast changes in society, accompanied by a blind rat race for attaining material accomplishments, have led to a social metamorphosis; it occurred chiefly in capital Dhaka.

With depression caused by failures in different areas including academic life, career building, or love affairs, the urban picture continued to take a grimmer turn as time wore on. Conjugal maladjustment or mistrust for each other also gives rise to depression. In short, the big cities eventually became distinct pockets in terms of mental health decline.

Average people are not prepared to accept psychological disorders as any other physical illness. It doesn't take time for the scourge to creep into the social, and finally, national spheres. Despite the absence of updated data thanks to the problem's stealthy nature, the number of unreported mental patients and suicide incidents continues to rise in the country. The nation can ill afford to skirt round the problem. In the absence of adequate treatment facilities, counselling at social and family levels ought to be brought to the persons suffering from mental illness. They need to be taught that suicide is a defeatist solution to problems. Mankind in general has never accepted it.

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