HERE in the Philippines, mental illness or disorder is now included in the list of "modern-day living diseases”, but it’s one of the issues that people don’t really talk about.
We don’t even think it’s a serious problem. We just think people who have it are just plain crazy.
Back in 2007, the Philippine Psychiatric Association stated that between 17 to 20 percent of the country’s adult population have psychiatric disorders and about 10 to 15 percent of children aged five to 15 are believed to have mental problems.
The National Statistics Office’s 2000 disability ranked mental illness as the third most common form of morbidity, or type of disease, after visual and hearing impairments among Filipinos. The same survey showed that 88 Filipinos out of every 100,000 population have mental problems.
In 2004, a Department of Health (DOH)-commissioned Social Weather Stations survey found that 0.7 percent of total Filipino households have a family member who has a psychological disorder like depression, schizophrenia, epilepsy, and substance abuse.
For which, most of us Filipinos, as a third world county, experience most of those.
But most reported cases of mental illness are often linked with familial or hereditary mental disorders including schizophrenia alongside with mental illness linked with psychosocial development. Also in the Philippines, it was noted that substance abuse are the leading direct and indirect causes of mental illness.
True. I come from a background with addicts and diagnosed with ADHD, depression, and anxiety. Though, they’re just a few of them in my clan, they’re still my blood, and they’re part of my genes. Luckily, I was born normal, and grew up to be a normal kid.
While I was growing up, I had the same thoughts as like everybody else.
Having mental disorders are more like of a choice. You can choose to have a healthy mental state or let it eat you. You also have the choice to be an addict or not. Apparently, in reality, it’s not how it is.
Today, I could say I don’t have a healthy mental state as I thought.
Doctors in my family hinting I might have persistent depressive disorder or dysthymia. A type of depression in which a person experience chronically depressed mood, lasting at least two years, which is not sufficiently severe, or in which individual episodes are not sufficiently prolonged, to justify a diagnosis of major depressive disorder.
But, I was never clinically diagnosed, because my mother thinks it’s impossible for me to have that and maybe I just have an attitude. Her mindset is the typical Filipino thinking which can worsen this pressing issue.
The social stigma associated with mental illness is a major cause for non-use of health and psychosocial services by Filipinos. The lack of understanding of mental illness and the importance of mental health among Filipinos is as serious as the lack of a regular and useful database on the prevalence, manifestations, causes and risk factors of mental illness in the country.
The World Health Organization identified that stigma, discrimination and neglect have prevented care and management from reaching persons with mental disorders. Psychiatric patients in the Philippines are usually managed in a mental hospital setting.
People with mental illness never wished to have their illness. Like cancer, it can be cured, but you have to start treating it before it gets worse. But, people who might have mental disorders are scared to get themselves checked and diagnosed because of how the country sees this issue.
They are viewed like disabled people. Like they’re not capable of doing the things that normal and mentally healthy people do. But, that’s not the case at all. Most of them are more creative and intelligent compared to normal people.
Good thing for other illnesses, they have a lot of doctors who are capable of treatment but here, we have only 400 licensed psychiatrists practicing in the country. This 400 is not enough at all. And it bothers me why there isn’t enough psychiatrists in the country.
Same reason as stated above. If I were a medical student, I wouldn’t want to be a psychiatrist because mental health is not as important as diabetes or tumors and I wouldn’t want to be surrounded with all of the “crazy” people.
I hope mental health won't take a backseat in the health agenda of the Duterte administration. It is really a pressing health issue, though, is not a fatal disease. Even those who have been mentally ill for most of their lives rarely die of mental illness.
But, remember, it is the "third most common form of disability". It is a problem that should be noticed and to have a resolution somehow. But first, we should change our perspective about mental illness for it to be understood and then be given action, because anyone, even you, or one of your family members, or even your friend could have it. (Icey Misa Estepa)