Unlike physical health problems, mental health problems are intangible, yet you would be surprised to know that millions of people globally are affected by one, or more than one forms of mental illness. In 2019, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, 970 million people globally were subject to mental health issues, where depression and anxiety were the major contributors. When people are diagnosed with a terminal disease like cancer, they leave no stone unturned to get the cure, however, in case of mental illness instead of seeking cure, people voluntarily embrace death by committing suicide. , . The objective of this articlecle is to get people to understand why they need to understand the immense importance of having sound mental health, breaking the silence if someone is affected with and how other people can provide moral support to the affected person.
Understanding Mental Health
Mental health is a complex phenomenon. It encompasses three aspects of a person’s personality. These three are emotional, psychological, and social well-being. Expression of emotion for example, joy, anger, or excitement is a positive sign that someone is emotionally happy. A mentally depressed person remains indifferent to any news or event. Psychological well-being refers to someone’s ability of rational thinking. A psychologically sound person does not make any mad decisions for example vandalism or arson attack. Finally, the social well-being refers in contrary to living an isolated life, live a life that maintains healthy relationship with family members, friends, colleagues, and relatives.
Common Mental Disorders
While different diagnostic processes are available to identify physical ailments of various types, there is no clinical test for detecting mental disorders. Lack of specific diagnostic testing in the context of mental illness results in terming psychological diseases with different names. Common names to label an individual struggling with mental illness are depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and eating disorders.
The Impact of Stigma
Historical Context
Historically, mental health was separated from mainstream health. In ancient times, Egyptians, who were well ahead of their time, considered mental illness as another physical ailment. While human civilization passed through into the Dark Ages, due to ignorance, people with mental problems were heavily stigmatized. The impact of the stigma had a myriad of consequences. A few worse consequences were isolation from the community, being chained and confined in a closed room, and due to social isolation extreme economic hardship.
Current State
Even though we are now living in the most advanced time of human civilization, the fate of people with mental illness has not changed much. More than half of these people do not get adequate attention from their family or state. Some of these people are also responsible for inflicting self-harm by avoiding or delaying treatment due to fear of a different treatment process involving mental sickness, losing jobs, or livelihood. People with mental illness often experience stigma, prejudice, and discrimination to varying degrees. Whatever the magnitude of these ill effects, they are harmful to mentally sick people.
Consequences
The consequences of stigma cause two-dimensional agony for mentally sick people. On the one hand, they suffer from disabilities and diseases detrimental effects. On the other hand, stigma is the cause of prejudice against mentally sick people. Due to this two-prong mental and social attack, people with mental disorders live a life that is invariably filled with neglect, unemployment, economic hardship, isolation, and unequal treatment everywhere. Sense of feeling the burden on their family, and state deteriorated to a level that some of them decide to commit suicide.
Breaking the Stigma
Education and Awareness Campaigns
The main cause of stigma is people’s ignorance surrounding the issue. While it is the main culprit causing mental sicknesses, many mentally disturbed patients don’t know what stigma is, what types of it, and is there a remedy. Making mentally sick people knowledgeable through education and awareness campaigns is an effective way of breaking the barrier of stigma.
Personal Stories and Testimonials
Personal stories of mentally sick people act as a live demonstration of this otherwise invisible disease. They(personal stories) help to demonstrate the problem more eloquently than printed materials. The power of real narratives is other people get the message that mental sickness could happen to anyone regardless of someone’s age, gender, or social status.
Role of Media
Media plays an important role in shaping our ideas. Since people have little chance to verify what they see on television or social media, most tend to believe that. The same idea is applicable for the stigma. Media can run positive mass awareness programs on stigma,helps to reduce it by offering direct counseling, and encourage people to seek counseling services. However, negative reports on stigma will demoralize people, intensify misunderstandings, and prejudices, and discourage people from seeking counseling
Providing Support
Mentally distressed people withdraw them from social, and economic activity. It has detrimental effects on the economy of a family or a country as a whole. Moreover, social withdrawal also impacts an individual’s health. Mental diseases are curable with quality healthcare services. However, these services are expensive. Access to affordable healthcare can help patients improve their conditions, and return to social and economic activity.
How Individuals Can Help
Apart from mental health providers, mentally sick people can help themselves. Instead of suppressing your mental issues, speak out about it. Social media is a convenient place to express your grief and lessen your mental burden. Self-learning about mental stigma helps to eliminate misconceptions surrounding the issue. Sharing your knowledge with others who have the same problem will solidify your idea and help them.
Mental health is a serious yet often overlooked health issue. Casualties surrounding this issue are alarming- more than 700,000 people every year. Luckily, this figure would have been much higher if more people were successful in their suicide attempts! Mental sickness is the primary cause of suicide. Stigma plays a major role in causing mental sickness. Getting rid of the stigma is possible with awareness, education, quality healthcare, community, and individual support.
