Stigma Surrounding Mental Health
Mental health has always been stigmatized and never been socially accepted like other diseases are in society. Throughout history, many mental health problems were explained by religious superstitions such as being possessed by a devil or demon and other bizarre things that people believed in. Many a time, people were killed for these reasons, which we are now finding were mental health disorders that people did not know about at the time. One outstanding example of that in history were the many cases of patients within mental institutions that had schizophrenia or dementia and were treated extremely poorly. They were not treated like patients in a hospital, but were often tied up, locked in rooms similar to jail cells, and in extreme cases underwent surgical procedures like lobotomies in which the anterior part of the frontal lobes were severed from the brain and sometimes removed completely. This left the patient without any personality, intellect, and emotionally blunted. This procedure has now been disparaged and described as medically barbaric.
Since then, there have been a lot of advances in the world of mental health. With advances in technology and science, we now have some understanding of most mental health disorders and ways to treat them. However, that stigma surrounding mental health still exists today. Often times, people with mental health illnesses are avoided or marked as unstable, violent, or dangerous due to their condition. Frequently, they are avoided, looked at differently, or even bullied because there is a lack of understanding of mental illnesses in the general public. People still fear them. This leads to the reluctance in seeking treatment, self-doubt and shame, and a worsening of their condition.
There is also the issues of health insurances that aren’t covering treatment well enough or sometimes at all for patients. “Access to mental health is inadequate in many low- and middle-income countries,” despite the evidence of the major effects it has on populations. Today, the percentage of people who remain untreated for mental health illnesses is estimated an upwards of 97% in some countries. This is also a problem in high-income countries that are not reaching the populations of lower socioeconomic status. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, nearly one in five US adults suffer from a mental illness and only 42.6% of people received services for mental health in the past year.
“In our society today, we talk openly about cancer, diabetes, and heart disease yet whisper about diseases of the brain such as depression and bipolar disease.” To normalize mental health illnesses, we need to start with addressing the stigma that exists surrounding mental health. Educating the public on mental health illnesses will help with this. Ensuring that healthcare providers provide these patient with the same care and respect as any patient with any other illness with training will also encourage more patients to seek care. We need to encourage people to get treatment when they need it. As a pharmacist, it should be one of our duties to counsel patients and encourage them not to be ashamed of their illness and provide them with resources such as support groups if they need it.
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