www.chitraltimes.com

Mental Illness through the Lens of Society

By: Mehwish Shamsi

Person who can only visible to me, his voice is so absorbing that it gives me intense pleasure but sometimes this voice directs me to do things which are against my wish. I talk to him comfortably and we converse for longer period of time but why he only visible to me not others?

When this innocent person asks this question to himself, he already enters from the glorious and cheerful world into arena of darkness. He requested with fearful facial expressions in deep weeping voice that he feels like someone takes his life away! He knows that his condition didn’t have any supernatural effect but nobody is ready to listen his bawl; he asked why me! He appealed please help me! Please! He cried I am not suffering from witch craft but this cruel world misinterprets these symptoms and took him to traditional healers which lead him towards misery of life.

Our perceptions persuade by people and environment in which we are living because sometimes we perceive world from other’s perspective. Society encompasses different people with diverse thinking, beliefs and myths particularly regarding health related issues; some are in favor but many a times it only gives despair to people. Pakistan is a developing country where mental illnesses are widely perceived to have supernatural causes and are stigmatized even by the educated masses. According to report from Aap ki Awaaz project (2007), “It is found that within the Pakistani community, impact on perceptions of mental health influences by culture & family traditions 74% and religious beliefs 39%”. As I am also part of society; I was pre-occupied with the thoughts that if someone anguish from symptoms of hallucination (person can see things which don’t exist in reality) or delusion (false fixed beliefs) subsequently it means he is having evil’s eye or its outcome of witch craft but when I studied about such illnesses thoroughly; my perception was completely changed that person may exhibit these symptoms due to disturbances in brain function which can be alleviate through medical treatment. Pakistani communities have very little awareness and view it as a weakness of the person. They think it is jinn possession or black magic, or nazar (evil eye) and so don’t consider any counseling or medical help and therefore, this approach has become the first step in the management of most mental disorders by the general community. When the symptoms don’t subside then family brings that person to health care service which is again in few cases. It causes substantial delays in seeking professional treatment, and subsequently leads to a poorer prognosis, high cost of the disease and higher burden on society. At that moment, it really takes time to recover him back and that’s another myth of society that mental illness can’t be recovered but in fact, the mentally ill or the psychiatric person can be recover if he gets treatment earlier. A recent study conducted in Pakistan showed that lack of awareness and false beliefs accounted for 61% of the cases of delayed consultation for first episode psychosis (Zafar et al., 2008).

Beliefs on supernatural powers regarding mental illness is widespread issue which is not only exist in Pakistani communities but also prevalent across Asia. Zafar et al (2008) found that, “Studies from India is similar in terms of cultural, social and traditional values and beliefs which shown that even urban and adequately educated families of India hold supernatural beliefs about the cause and management of mental illnesses”. Ganasen et al. (2008) stated that, “In Malaysia, it was found that psychiatric patients who believed in supernatural causes were more likely to make use of traditional healers and were less willing to comply with medication”. According to study in Saudi Arabia, when patients are insistent that the evil eye was the cause of their illness, it hinders the process of treatment as they become uncooperative and refuse to take their medicine (Eidan, 2007). Hence, in the light of above evidences; it has been viewed that in Asian countries these practices is very prevalent where lack of awareness is leading cause.

Education and awareness regarding mental illness can change the perception of society to some extent. For this purpose, World Health Organization is actively working in the horizon of mental health literacy in developing countries in which directions for developing cost-effective and sustainable mental health programmes have been outlined. Mental health professionals will have to adopt innovative approaches to mental health literacy like one interesting attempt in this direction was to create awareness among schoolchildren and their teachers because schoolchildren in rural areas are the eyes and ears of the community (Mubbashar & Farooq, 2001). Furthermore, there is need to initiate Public awareness, anti-stigma campaigns and large mental health movements in Pakistan, which should be focus on those commonly held misconceptions which especially targeting unaware and rural population.
In culmination, cultural influences, behavior of individuals and robust attitudes work on hand in hand with each other and contribute to mental illness which may hurdle pathway to care. In my outlook, there is mandate for treating innocent’s mentally ill; with spiritual beliefs as well as medical treatment in order to get full recovery.