Stigmatization of Mental Illness
People with mental illness suffer from many problems
in their life and one of the major problem which they face
is the social stigma surrounding their illness. Stigma: ‘a mark of disgrace associated
with a particular condition’ is making lives miserable for a long time now. In
addition to the decreased compliance of mentally ill people, social stigma plays
an important role in the delay of treatment and recovery.
Common diseases that are stigmatized in our society
are depression, epilepsy, social anxiety disorder, maniac depressive disorder
and schizophrenia. We live in a society where a mother keeps her epileptic
child at home for hours as he is suffers from an epileptic episode while the health facility is only 15
minutes away from her home just because she doesn’t want her neighbors to know
that her child is ‘Pagal' and she waits till it gets dark so no one can see her
child suffering. Similarly, a person suffering from depression doesn’t go to
the psychiatrist because all people who are seeing a psychiatrist are apparently ‘pagal' and then somewhere between the stigma and the fight against depression, he loses
his life.
The lives of mentally ill people are drastically
altered by the symptoms of their illness and sometimes these symptoms are so
severe that patients lose everything normal in their lives. On one hand they
are fighting with their symptoms and trying to cope with the circumstances
created by their illness, on the other hand is social stigma and public
reaction towards their illness that is making their lives more difficult so these
people are challenged doubly. They are challenged by stereotypes and are being
discriminated from normal people and this makes it more difficult for them to
survive and recover from their illness. They get robbed of their opportunities to
survive in the society that is their jobs, academics, relations and even home
sometimes.
Another thing is that this stigma is not from the
society only but also from friends, family, relatives and even parents. This
discrimination is so sickening that people become more depressed instead of
recovering. As stigma and discrimination worsen the mental condition, in
addition it may impede the process of recovery and their only chance to thrive
in society. They become so helpless and depressed that they do not want to get
help or any kind of treatment because they think that society will never accept
them again as normal people. This discriminative and prejudiced behavior kill
the self-esteem of people and that turn against themselves and refuse treatment.
People with mental illness are stereotyped as wild,
dangerous and violent and this have negative impact upon their recovery. Stigma
leads to social isolation of patients which push them deep into the dark world
of their depression and illness. This depression and social boycott is the
leading cause of suicides in mentally ill people. And this ratio is increasing
day by day.
The only solution of this problem is to educate our
public regarding this issue and eliminate this virus from our society. By solving
this we can save thousands of lives suffering from psychic disorders which have
cure and those people can become normal citizens again. It’s just that we
provide them love and care and treat them as they are part of our society and
give them opportunities by keeping this stigmas aside. So no mother should have to wait
for night to take her child to doctors and no depressed person should commit suicide
instead of seeking therapy.
- Faiqa Hashmi (Class of 2018)
Comments
Post a Comment