A community meeting in progress at Sanker Nursing Home in Shillong. A file picture

Mental health woes

Mental health is one of the least understood ailments of modern society. Yet about 50 per cent of all ailments are psychosomatic in nature, meaning that they are more psychosocial and intellectual than physical.

In Meghalaya, the Sanker Nursing Home has served people with various mental disabilities for nearly two decades.

The nursing home is a labour of love of Dr Sandi Syiem, Meghalaya’s renowned psychiatrist. He started his little caring unit in a cowshed on a sprawling three acres of forestland at Mawlai. Today, Sanker Nursing Home is perhaps the only private initiative in mental healthcare in the Northeast.

Meghalaya is known for its high rate of alcoholism and alcohol-related deaths. Official statistics, however, tend to obscure things than reveal the truth. Sanker was first created to address the needs of alcoholics, many of whom were disowned by family.

From that humble beginning, the nursing home has grown into an institution offering diploma courses for educating young people to understand the wide range of mental health problems and provide counselling and care to people with mental illness.

Social taboo

There was a time when mental illness used to be known by the simple term of “madness”. Families that had someone with this ailment were ashamed. Others considered it a visitation from the gods. But whatever the case it was a social taboo. Most people, therefore, excluded that “mad” person from family conversations and hid them from visitors. They would, in fact, be happier if the person could be confined to some state institution.

Today things have changed. People are no longer shy of looking for psychiatric care. Teachers and heads of educational institutions say that more and more young people are suffering from depression and other mental disorders which were hitherto unknown or not detected.

High expectations from parents, the need to score higher and higher marks to get into institutions their parents aspire to, and their own inability to meet these demands throw children over the deep end. When the young are unable to voice their agitation and parents are unable to understand them, depression sets in.

Parents unfortunately are the last persons to understand their kids. Their responses to their children’s mental disorders are at best ignorant and at worst marked by rude impatience.

Ignorant responses can be very damaging. But a lack of understanding is worse since it could lead to teenage suicides. Dr Syiem says unless people understand what they are dealing with, they will not get anywhere. There is general ignorance about mental illness, which encompasses numerous psychiatric disorders such as depression, anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, manic depression, schizophrenia and obsessive compulsive disorders.

The problem with mental illness is that the patient may appear quite normal since he or she is not suffering from physical ailments. Family members often feel that the person is faking it or trying to avoid responsibility or that the person is lazy, when actually he or she is suffering from mental sickness that manifests itself in mood swings and feelings of hopelessness.

Ray of hope

After a long and persistent struggle by persons with disabilities, the State now recognises that they have rights enforceable under the Constitution. It was precisely to explore State responsibility and response to mental disabilities that Sanker Charitable Trust, in association with Shishu Sarothi, Guwahati organised a daylong workshop on April 26 in Shillong.

The purpose of the workshop was to create awareness among stakeholders who include family members of patients with mental disabilities, activists and NGOs. Mood disorder is the fourth most common disability worldwide.

Women have a higher chance of suffering from mood disorders. Twenty per cent of women (which is one out of four) and twelve per cent of men (one in seven) suffer from mood disorders. The suicide rate among such people is as high as 15 per cent and is more common among the young or the elderly.

Although this affliction is very high among women, more men die of suicide. Depression, one learnt, will rank second among the mental disabilities, by 2020.

Research shows that the more educated the mental patients, the more they tend towards suicide. Hence Kerala has the highest suicide rate, while Bihar has the lowest.

According to Dr Syiem, there is a lot of confusion about schizophrenia as well. He defined it as a split between thought, feeling and action. But schizophrenia is definitely not “split personality”, as some tend to believe, he added. It is simply an abnormal perception where the patient hears what others do not and responds accordingly.

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is also a blunting of emotions and inability to relate to others. Such patients need a supportive environment at home and active family support if they are to recover.

These days, it is common to hear doctors discussing patients who come to them with some form of mental illness.

Often what these patients are looking for is somebody to listen to them. But in a busy world who has the time to spare for such listening exercises? This is where professional counsellors are needed.

There is the example of a university student who never suffered from any ailment.

One day she just fainted and was later diagnosed with anxiety. Since she comes from a family that is relatively ignorant about mental illness, the family believes that she might be a victim of witchcraft.

What is heartening is that increased legal awareness mainly through the involvement of a committed batch of lawyers has brought the issue into sharp focus.

How responsive the judiciary is to the problem of mental health can be gauged from the fact that the Chief Justice of Gauhati High Court, Justice J. Chelameshwar, along with two other judges, was present at the workshop.

They patiently listened to the list of recommendations that emerged out of the workshop. Indeed, legal advocacy is the need of the hour since persons with mental disability have no voice.

On its part, the State has to be more responsive instead of shirking its responsibility towards people with mental disability.

(The writer can be contacted at patricia17@rediffmail.com)